EDUGi|:|:iQN 

Scott Ne arin g 




Class __i_ils^_ 

Book- n ^^ 

Gop}TiC>ht]^°. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The New Education 



A REVIEW OF PROGRESSIVE 

EDUCATIONAL MOVEMENTS 

OF THE DAY 



BY 

SCOTT NEARING, Ph.D. 

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 

author of "social adjustment," 
"the super race," "wages in the united states," 
'social sanity," "reducing the cost of living," etc. 




Chicago New York 

ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY 






COPYEIGHT, 1915 

ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY 



MAR 13 1915 



CI,A393981 



PREFACE 

During 1910, 1911, and 1912, as a part of a general 
plan to write a book on education, I reread a great deal 
of the classical educational literature, and carefully 
perused most of the current material in magazine and 
book form. An interest aroused by undergraduate and 
graduate work in the department of pedagogy had been 
whetted by the revolutionary activity in every field of 
educational endeavor. The time seemed ripe for an 
effective piece of constructive educational writing, yet 
I could not see my way clear to begin it. Glaring faults 
there were ; remedies appeared ready at hand and easy 
of application; the will of an aroused public opinion 
alone seemed to be lacking. By what method could this 
wheel horse of reform best be harnessed to the car of 
educational progress? 

I was still seeking for an answer to this riddle when 
the editors of ' * The Ladies ' Home Journal ' ' asked me to 
consider the preparation of a series of articles. ''We 
have done some sharp destructive work in our criticisms 
of the schools,'' they said. ''Now we are going to do 
some constructive writing. "We are in search of two 
things : — first, a constructive article outlining in general 
a possible scheme for reorganizing the course of study; 
second, a series of articles describing in a readable way 
the most successful public school work now being done 
in the United States. "We want you to visit the schools, 
study them at first-hand, and bring back a report of the 
best that they have to offer. When your investigation 

3 



4 THE NEW EDUCATION 

is completed, we shall expect you to write the material 
up in such a form that each reader, after finishing an 
article, will exclaim, — ' ' There is something that we must 
introduce into our schools.' " 

That was my opportunity. Instead of writing a book 
to be read by a thousand persons, I could place a number 
of constructive articles before two million readers. The 
invitation was a godsend. 

The articles, when completed, formed a natural 
sequence. First there was the general article (Chap- 
ter 3) suggesting the reorganization. Then followed 
descriptions of the schools in which some such reorgan- 
izations had been effected. Prepared with the same point 
of view, the articles constituted an acceptable series, 
having a general object and a connecting idea running 
throughout. What more natural than to write a few 
words of introduction and conclusion, and put the 
whole in book form? The style of the articles has been 
changed somewhat, and considerable material has been 
added to them; but, in the main, they stand as they 
were written — simple descriptions of some of the most 
advanced school work now being done in the United 
States. 

Looked at from any standpoint, this study is a collec- 
tion of articles rather than a book, yet there is sufficient 
relation between the articles to give a measure of con- 
tinuity to the thought which they convey. In no sense 
is the work pedagogical or theoretical. It is, on the 
contrary, a record of the impressions made on a traveler 
by a number of school systems and schools. The articles 
purported to cover the most progressive work which is 
being done in the most progressive schools. Although the 
selection of successful schools was made only after a 
careful canvass among the leading educators of the 



PEEFACE 5 

country, there are undoubtedly many instances, still at 
large, which are in every sense as worthy of commenda- 
tion as any here recorded. This fact does not in any way 
vitiate the purpose of the original articles, which was to 
set down a statement of some educational successes in 
such a way that the lay reader, grasping the significance 
of these ventures, might see in them immediate possi- 
bilities for the schools in his locality. 

Behind all of the chapters is the same idea — the idea 
of educating children — an idea which has taken firm 
hold of the progressive educators in every section of the 
community. The schoolmaster is breaking away from 
the traditions of his craft. He has laid aside the birch, 
the three *'R's," the categorical imperative, and a host 
of other instruments invented by ancient pedagogical 
inquisitors, and with an open mind is going up and 
down the world seeking to reshape the schools in the 
interests of childhood. The task is Herculean, but the 
enthusiasm and energy which inspire his labors are 
sufficient to overcome even those obstacles which are 
apparently insurmountable. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction. The Old Education 11 

I. The Critical Spirit and the Schools 11 

II. Some Harsh Words from the Inside 12 

III. A Word from Huxley and Spencer 15 

rv. Some Honest Facts 17 

V. Have We FuMUed the Object of Education? 22 

Chapter I. The New Basis for Education 24 

I. Can There Be a New Basis ? 24 

II. Social Change 25 

III. Keeping Up With the Times 26 

rv. Education in the Early Home 27 

V. City Life and the New Basis for Education 28 

Chapter II. Teaching Boys and Girls 32 

I. The New School Machinery 32 

II. Eousseau Versus a Class of Forty 33 

III. The Fallacious ' ' Average " 34 

rv. The Five Ages of Childhood 35 

V. Age Distribution in One Grade 36 

VI. Shall Child or Subject Matter Come First? 39 

VII. The Vicious Practices of One ''Good" School 40 

VIII. Boys and Girls — The One Object of Educational 

Activity 42 

Chapter III. Fitting Schools to Children 44 

I. Child Growth — A Primary Factor in Child Life ... 44 

II. Children Need Health First 45 

III. Play as a Means to Growth 46 

IV. Some Things Which a Child Must Learn 48 

V. What Schools Must Provide to Meet Child Needs. . 51 

VI. The Educational Work of the Small Town 52 

VII. The Educational Problems of an Industrial Com- 
munity 55 

VIII. Beginning With Child Needs 56 

7 



8 THE NEW EDUCATION 

PAGE 

Chapter IV. Progressive Notes in Elementary Education 58 

I. The Kindergarten 58 

II. Translating the Three E 's 59 

III. Playing at Mathematics 60 

IV. A Model English Lesson 61 

V. An Original Fairy Story 65 

VI. The Crow and the Scarecrow 67 

VII. School and Home 68 

VIII. Breaking New Ground 71 

IX. The School and the Community 72 

X. New Keys for Old Locks 74 

XI. School and Shop 76 

XII. Half a Chance to Study 79 

XIII. Thwarting Satan in the Summer Time 80 

XIV. Sending the Whole Child to School 81 

XV. Smashing the School Machine ,. . . . 84 

XVI. All Hands Around for an Elementary School 86 

XVII. From a Blazed Trail to a Paved Highway 90 

Chapter V. Keeping the High School in Step With Life 92 

I. The Eesponsibility of the High School 92 

II. An Experiment in Futures 92 

III. The Success Habit 95 

IV. The Help-out Spirit 97 

V. Joining Hands With the Elementary Schools 98 

VI. The Abolition of '^Mass Play" 101 

VII. Experimental Democracy. . 103 

VIII. Breaching Chinese Wall of High School Classicism 105 

IX. An Up-to-Date High School 107 

X. From School to Shop and Back Again 109 

XI. Fitting the High School Graduate Into Life 110 

XII. The High School as a Public Servant 114 

Chapter VI. Higher Education at Lowville 116 

I. Lowville and the Neighborhood 116 

II. Lowville Academy 117 

III. The School's Opportunity 119 

IV. Field Work as Education 120 

V. Eeal Domestic Science 122 

Vl. One Instance of Success 123 



CONTENTS 9 

\ 

\ 

PAGE 

Chapter VII. A Great City School System 125 

I. ' ' Cooperation ' ' and ' ' Progressivism " 125 

II. An Educational Creed 127 

III. Vitalizing the Kindergarten 129 

IV. Eegenerating the Grades 132 

V. Popularizing High School Education 137 

VI. A City University 140 

VII. Special Schools for Special Classes 141 

VIII. Special Schools for Special Children 144 

IX. Playground and Summer Schools 145 

X. Mr. Dyer and the Men Who Stood With Him 147 

Chapter VIII. The Oyler School of Cincinnati 153 

I. An Experiment in Social Education 153 

II. An Appeal for Applied Education 156 

III. Solving a Local Problem 157 

IV. Domestic Science Which Domesticates 159 

V. Making Commercial Products in the Grades 161 

VI. A Eeal Interest in School 162 

VII. The Mothers ' Club 163 

VIII. The Disappearance of ' ' Discipline " 165 

IX. The Spirit of Oyler 167 

Chapter IX. Vitalizing Eural Education 170 

I. The Call of the Country 170 

II. Making Bricks With Straw 171 

III. Making the One-Eoom Country School Worth While 182 

IV. Eepainting the Little Eed Schoolhouse 187 

V. A Fairyland of Eural Education 188 

VI. The Task of the Country School 193 

Chapter X. Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings 195 

I. Miss Belle 195 

II. Going to Work Through the Children 196 

III. Beginning on Muffins 197 

IV. Taking the Boys in Hand 200 

V. *' Busy Work " as an Asset 201 

VI. Marguerite 203 

VII. Winning Over the Families 204 



10 THE NEW EDUCATION 

PAGE 

Chapter XL Wide- Awake Sleepy Eye 207 

I. Fitting Schools to Needs 207 

II. Getting the Janitor in Line 208 

III, The Department of Agriculture 209 

IV. A Short Course for Busy People 212 

V. Letting the Boys Do It 214 

VI. A Look at the Domestic Science 214 

VII. How It Works Out 216 

VIII. Theoretical and Practical 217 

Chapter XII. The South for the New Education 220 

I. A Dream of Empire 220 

11. Finding the Way 222 

III. Jem 's Father 224 

IV. Club Life Militant 228 

V. Canning Clubs 234 

VI. Eeeognition Day for Boys and Girls 235 

VII. Teaching Grown-Ups to Eead 236 

VIII. George Washington, Junior 237 

IX. A Step Toward Good Health 239 

X. Theory and Practice 242 

XL A People Coming to Its Own 249 

Chapter XIII. The Spirit of the New Education 251 

I. The Standard of Education 251 

II. Standardization Was a Failure 252 

III. Education as Growth 254 

IV. Child Needs and Community Needs 255 

V. The Final Test of Education 257 



THE NEW EDUCATION 

INTRODUCTION 

THE OLD EDUCATION 

I The Critical Spirit and the Schools 

' ^ Everybody is doing it, ' ' said a high school principal 
the other day. ' ' I look through the new books and I find 
it; it stands out prominently in technical as well as in 
popular magazines ; even the educational papers are tak- 
ing it up, — everybody seems to be whacking the schools. 
Yesterday I picked up a funny sheet on which there 
were four raps at the schools. One in particular that 
I remember ran something like this, — 

*' 'James,' said the teacher, 'if Thomas has three red 
apples and William has five yellow apples, how many 
apples have Thomas and William ? ' 

*' James looked despondent. 

*' 'Don't you know?' queried the teacher, 'how much 
three plus five is?' 

" 'Oh, yes, ma'am, I know the answer, but the for- 
mula, ma'am, — it's the formula that appals me.' 

"Probably nine-tenths of the people who read that 
story enjoyed it hugely," continued the schoolman, 
"and they enjoyed it because it struck a responsive 
chord in their memories. At one time or another in their 
school lives, they, too, bowed in dejection before the 
tyranny of formulas." 

This criticism of school formulas is not confined to 
popular sources. Prominent authorities in every field 

11 



12 THE NEW EDUCATION 

which comes in contact with the school are barbarous in 
their onslaughts. State and city superintendents, prin- 
cipals, teachers, parents, employers, — all have made con- 
tribution to the popular clamor. On every hand may be 
gleaned evidences of an unsatisfied critical spirit. 

II Some Harsh Words from the Inside 

The Commissioner of Education of New York State 
writes of the schools, — ^ ''A child is worse off in a 
graded school than in an ungraded one, if the work of a 
grade is not capable of some specific valuation, and if 
each added grade does not provide some added power. 
The first two grades run much to entertainment and 
amusement. The third and fourth grades repeat the 
work supposed to have been done in the first two. Too 
many unimportant and unrelated facts are taught. It is 
like the wearying orator who reels off stories only to 
amuse, seems incapable of choosing an incident to 
enforce a point, and makes no progress toward a logical 
conclusion. 

"When but one-third of the children remain to the 
end of the elementary course, there is something the 
matter with the schools. When half of the men who are 
responsible for the business activities and who are guid- 
ing the political life of the country tell us that children 
from the elementary schools are not able to do definite 
things required in the world's real affairs, there is 
something the matter with the schools. When work 
seeks workers, and young men and women are indifferent 
to it or do not know how to do it, there is something 
the matter with the schools.^ 

1 "American Education,*' Andrew S. Draper, Boston; Houghton 
Mifflin Co., 1909, pp. 281-83. 

2 Ibid., p. 275. 



INTRODUCTION 13 

** There is a waste of time and productivity in all of 
the grades of the elementary schools. " ^ ' ' The things 
that are weighing down the schools are the multiplicity 
of studies which are only informatory, the prolongation 
of branches so as to require many text-books, and the 
prolixity of treatment and illustration that will accom- 
modate psychological theory and sustain pedagogical 
methods which have some basis of reason, but which have 
been most ingeniously overdone. ' ' ^ 

Former United States Commissioner of Education, 
E. E. Brown, is responsible for the statement that, — 
"With all that we have done to secure regular and 
continuous attendance at school, it is still a mark of dis- 
tinction when any city is able to keep even one-half of 
the pupils who are enrolled in its schools until they 
have passed even the seventh grade." ^ 

Here is an illustration, from the pen of ' a widely 
known educational expert, of the character of educational 
facilities in the well-to-do suburb of an Eastern city. 
After describing two of the newer schools (1911) Prof. 
Hanus continues, — "The Maple Avenue School is too 
small for its school population, without a suitable office 
for the principal or a common room for the teachers, 
and, of course, very inadequately equipped for the work 
it ought to do ; it ought, therefore, to be remodeled and 
added to without delay. The Chestnut Street School is 
old, gloomy, crowded, badly ventilated, and badly heated, 
has steep and narrow stairways, and it would be dan- 
gerous in case of fire. There are fire escapes, to be sure, 

1 Ibid., p. 281. 

2 Idem. 

6 The Responsibility of the School, E. E. Brown, U, S. Commis- 
sioner of Education. A pamphlet privately printed in Phila- 
delphia, 1908, containing a series of addresses. 



14 THE NEW EDUCATION 

but the access to some of these, though apparently easy 
in a fire drill, might be seriously inadequate and dan- 
gerous in case of haste or panic due to a real fire. In 
such a building sustained good work by teachers and 
pupils is very difficult. . . . 

''The High School is miserably housed. It is dingy, 
badly lighted and badly ventilated. These defects con- 
stitute a serious menace to the physical welfare of pupils 
and teachers and, of course, seriously interfere with good 
work. It is crowded. Intercommunication is devious 
and inconvenient. The building is quite unfit for high 
school uses. Some of the school furniture is very poor ; 
the physical and chemical classrooms and laboratories 
are very unsatisfactory, and its biological laboratory and 
equipment scarcely less so. The assembly room is too 
small, badly arranged, and badly furnished. There are 
no toilet-rooms for the teachers, and there is no common 
room. There is no satisfactory or adequate lunch-room. 
The library is in crowded quarters; the principalis office 
space is altogether too small, and his private office almost 
derisively so."^ 

Overwork in the school is said to be alarmingly preva- 
lent. ''It is generally recognized by physicians and 
educators to-day that many children in the schools are 
being seriously injured through nervous overstrain. 
Throughout the world there is a developing conviction 
that one of the most important duties of society is to 
determine how education may be carried on without 
depriving children of their health. It is probable that 
we are not requiring too much work of our pupils, but 
they are not accomplishing their tasks economically in 
respect to the expenditure of nervous energy. Some 

1 Report on the Programme of Studies in the Public Schools 
of Montclair, N. J., Paul H. Hanus, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 7 and 8. 



INTEODUCTION 15 

experiments made at home and abroad seem to indicate 
that children could accomplish as much intellectually, 
with far less dissipation of nervous energy, if they were 
in the schoolroom about one-half the time which they 
now spend there. German educators and physicians are 
convinced that a fundamental reform in this respect is 
needed. In fact, among school children we are learning 
the same lesson as among factory employees, viz., that 
high pressure and long hours are not economy but waste 
of time."^ 

The school has been rendered monotonous. ''We have 
worked for system till the public schools have become 
machines. It has been insistently proclaimed that all 
children must do things the same way for so long a time, 
that many of us have actually come to believe it. Chil- 
dren unborn are predestined to work after the same 
fashion that their grandparents did."^ 

Ill A Word from Huxley and Spencer 

These are typical of a host of similar criticisms of the 
schools which leading educators, men working within the 
school system, are directing against it. Out of the full- 
ness of their experience they spread the conviction that 
the school often fails to prepare for life, that it fre- 
quently distorts more effectively than it builds. The 
thought is not new. Thomas Huxley asked, years ago, 
whether education should not be definitely related to 
life. He wrote, — ''If there were no such things as 
industrial pursuits, a system of education which does 
nothing for the faculties of observation, which trains 

lEeport on National Vitality, Irving Fisher, Washington Gov- 
ernment Print, 1909, pp. 76-77. 

2 The Problem of Individualizing Instruction, W. F. Andrew, 
Education, Vol. 26, p. 135 (1905). 



16 THE NEW EDUCATION 

neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with 
utter ignorance of the commonest natural truths, might 
still be reasonably regarded as strangely imperfect. 
And when we consider that the instruction and training 
which are lacking are exactly those which are of most 
importance for the great mass of our population, the 
fault becomes almost a crime, the more so in that there is 
no practical difficulty in making good these defects. ' ' ^ 

Approaching the matter from another side, Tyler puts 
a pertinent question in his ''Growth and Education, — '^ 
' ' In the grammar grade is learning and mental discipline 
of chief importance to the girl, or is care of the body 
and physical exercise absolutely essential at this period ? 
No one seems to know, and very few care. What would 
nature say ? " ^ 

Herbert Spencer answers Tyler's question in spirited 
fashion. "While many years are spent by a boy in 
gaining knowledge, of which the chief value is that it 
constitutes 'the education of a gentleman;' and while 
many years are spent by a girl in those decorative ac- 
quirements which fit her for evening parties ; not an hour 
is spent by either of them in preparation for that 
gravest of all responsibilities — the management of a 
family. " ^ " For shoe-making or house-building, for the 
management of a ship or a locomotive-engine, a long 
apprenticeship is needful. It is, then, that the unfold- 
ing of a human being in body and mind, may we super- 
intend and regulate it with no preparation whatever ? " * 

1 Evolution and Ethics, T. H. Huxley, New York, D. Appleton 
& Co., 1902, p. 220. 

2 Growth and Education, J. M. Tyler, Houghton MiflSin Co., 
New York, 1907, p. 21. 

3 Education, H. Spencer, New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1861, 
p. 162. ^ 

4 Supra, p. 63. 



INTRODUCTION 17 

One fact is self-evident, — the existence of a body 
of criticism and hostility is prima facia evidence of 
weakness on the part of the institution criticised, par- 
ticularly when the criticism comes -strong and sharp 
from school-men themselves. The extent and severity 
of school criticism certainly bespeaks the careful con- 
sideration of those most interested in maintaining the 
efficiency of the school system. 

IV Some Honest Facts 

Let us face the facts honestly. If you include country 
schools, and they must be included in any discussion 
of American Education, the school mortality, — i. e., the 
children who drop out of school between the first and 
eighth years — is appalling. We may quarrel over per- 
centages, but the dropping out is there. 

The United States Commissioner of Education 
writes, — ^ "Of twenty-five million children of school age 
(5 to 18), less than twenty million are enrolled in 
schools of all kinds and grades, public and private ; and 
the average daily attendance does not exceed fourteen 
million, for an average school term of less than 8 months 
of 20 days each. The average daily attendance of those 
enrolled in the public schools is only 113 days in the 
year, less than 5% months. The average attendance of 
the entire school population is only 8OI/2 days, or 4 
months of 20 days each. Assuming that this rate of 
attendance shall continue through the 13 school years 
(5 to 18), the average amount of schooling received by 
each child of the school population will be 1,046 days, 
or a little more than 5 years of 10 school months. This 

1 Annual Report, U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1911; Wash- 
ington Government Print., 1912, Vol. I, pp. 12-13. 



18 THE NEW EDUCATION 

bureau has no reliable statistics on the subject, but it is 
quite probable that less than half the children of the 
country finish successfully more than the first 6 grades ; 
only about one-fourth of the children ever enter high 
school ; and less than 8 in every 100 do the full 4 years 
of high school work. Fewer than 5 in 100 receive any 
education above the high school." 

Taking this dropping out into consideration, it is 
probable that the majority of children who enter Amer- 
ican schools receive no more education than will enable 
them to read clumsily, to write badly, to spell wretch- 
edly, and to do the simplest mathematical problems 
(addition, subtraction, etc.) with difficulty. In any 
real sense of the word, they are neither educated nor 
cultured. 

Judge Draper, Superintendent of Public Instruction 
in New York State, writes, — ^ ''We cannot exculpate 
the schools. They are as wasteful of child life as are the 
homes. From the bottom to the top of the American 
educational system we take little account of the time 
of the child. , . . "We have eight or nine elementary 
grades for work which would be done in six if we were 
working mainly for productivity and power. We have 
shaped our secondary schools so that they confuse the 
thinking of youth and break the equilibrium between 
education and vocations, and people and industries. . . . 
In the graded elementary schools of the State of New 
York, less than half of the children remain to the end 
of the course. They do not start early enough. They 
do not attend regularly enough. The course is too full 

1 Conserving Childhood, Andrew S. Draper ; The Child Workers 
of the Nation, Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference on 
Child Labor, Chicago, 111., Jan. 21-23, 1909; New York, 1909, 
pp. 9-10. 



INTEODUCTION 19 

of mere pedagogical method, exploitation and illustra- 
tion, if not of kinds and classes of work. The terms are 
too short and the vacations too long. . . . More than half 
of the children drop out by the time they are fourteen 
or fifteen, the limits of the compulsory attendance age, 
because the work of the schools is behind the age of the 
pupils, and we do not teach them the things which lead 
them and their parents to think it will be worth their 
while to remain." 

Observe that Judge Draper writes of the graded 
schools only. Could you conceive of a more stinging 
rebuke to an institution from a man who is making it his 
business to know its innermost workings ? 

These statements refer, not to the small percentage of 
children who go to high school, but to that great mass of 
children who leave the school at, or before, fourteen years 
of age. If you do not believe them, go among working 
children and find out what their intellectual qualifica- 
tions really are. 

One fact must be clearly borne in mind, — the school 
system is a social institution. In the schools are the 
people's children. Public taxes provide the funds for 
public education. Perhaps no great institution is more 
generally a part of community interest and experience 
than the public school system. 

The most surprising thing about the school figures is 
the overwhelming proportion of students in the ele- 
mentary grades— 17,050,441 of the 18,207,803. If you 
draw three lines, the first representing the number of 
children in the elementary schools, the second showing 
the number in the high school, and the third the number 
of students in colleges, professional and normal schools, 
the contrast is astonishing. 

It is perfectly evident, therefore, that the real work 



20 THE NEW EDUCATION 

of education must be done in the elementary grades. 
The high schools with a million students, and the univer- 
sities, colleges, professional and normal schools with 
three hundred thousand more, constitute an increas- 
ingly important factor in education; at the same time, 
for every seven students in these higher schools, there 
are ninety-three children in the elementary grades. The 
proportion is so unexpected that it staggers us — more 
than nine-tenths of the children who attend school in 
the United States are in the elementary grades! Can 
this be the school system of which our forefathers 
dreamed when they established a universal, free educa- 
tion nearly a hundred years ago ? Did they foresee that 
such an overwhelming proportion of American children 
would never have an opportunity to secure more than 
the rudiments of an education? 

Be that as it may, the facts glower menacingly at us 
from city, town and countryside, — the overcrowded ele- 
mentary grades and the higher schools mth but a scant 
proportion of the students. So, if we wish to educate 
the great mass of American children, we must go to the 
primary grades to do it. 

There are, in the public schools, 533,606 teachers, 
four-fifths of whom are women. These teachers are at 
work in 267,153 school buildings having a total value of 
$1,221,695,730. Each year some four hundred and fifty 
million dollars are devoted to maintaining and adding 
to this educational machine. 

The school system is the greatest saving fund which 
the American people possess. The total value of school 
property is greater than the entire fortune of the richest 
American. Each year the people spend upon their 
schools a sum sufficient to construct a Panama Canal 
or a transcontinental railway system. Thus the public 



INTRODUCTION 21 

school is the greatest public investment in the United 
States. 

It is one thing to invest, and quite a different matter 
to be assured a fair return on the investment. 'Never- 
theless, the individual investor believes in his right to a 
fair return. From their public investments, the people, 
in fairness, can demand no more; in justice to them- 
selves, they may accept no less. Are they receiving a 
fair return? The people of the United States have 
invested nearly a billion dollars in the public school 
system; each year they contribute nearly half a billion 
dollars more toward the same end. Are they getting 
what they pay for? 

Turn to another section of the Report of the Commis- 
sioner of Education, and note how, in mild alarm, he 
protests against teachers' salaries so low "that it is 
clearly impossible to hire the services of men and women 
of good native ability and sufficient scholarship, training 
and experience to enable them to do satisfactory work ; ' ' 
against the schoolhouses, which are "cheap, insanitary, 
uncomfortable and unattractive;" against "thousands 
of schools" in which "one teacher teaches from twenty 
to thirty classes a day;" against "courses of study ill- 
adapted to the interest of country children or the needs 
of country life ; ' ' against ^ ' a small enrollment of the 
total children of school age," and a school attendance 
so low that ' ' the average of the entire school population 
is only 8OI/2 days per year. ' ' ^ 

The tone of these statements is certainly not reassur- 
ing. Perhaps it is high time that the citizens inquired 
into the status of their educational securities — their 
public school system. 

1 Report U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1911, Vol. I, p. 12. 



22 THE NEW EDUCATION 

V Have We Fulfilled the Object of Education? 

The object of education is complete living. A perfect 
educational system would prepare those participating 
in it to live every phase of their lives, and to derive 
from life all possible benefit. Any educational system 
which enables men to live completely is therefore ful- 
filling its function. On the other hand, an educational 
system which does not prepare for life is not meeting 
the necessary requirements. 

Charles Dickens, in his characteristic way, thus de- 
scribes in ' ' Hard Times ' ' a public school class under the 
title ' ' Murdering the Innocents : ' ' 

" 'In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; noth- 
ing but Facts.' 

''The speaker and the school master swept with their 
eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there 
arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of 
facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. 
So Mr. M'Choakumchild (the school master) began in 
his best manner. He went to work on this preparatory 
lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves — look- 
ing into all the vessels ranged before him, one after 
another, to see what they contained. Say, good Mr. 
M'Choakumchild: when from thy store thou shalt fill 
each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think thou wilt 
always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within, or 
sometimes only maim him and distort him ! ' ' 

Is the picture overdrawn? Are there grades in our 
large American cities where conditions similar to those 
just portrayed may be found ? Every parent who has a 
child in the public schools, every taxpayer who contrib- 
utes to school support, has a right to a direct, impartial 
and honest answer to that question. 



INTEODUCTION 23 

Among educators as well as among members of the 
general public a spirit of educational unrest has devel- 
oped. Everywhere there is an ill-defined feeling of dis- 
satisfaction with the work of the schools; everywhere 
an earnest desire to see the schools do more effectively 
the school work which is regarded, on every hand, as 
imperative. 

The facts of school failure are more generally known 
than the facts of school success ; yet there are successful 
schools. Indeed, some of the school systems of the 
United States are doing remarkably effective work. 
Emphasis has been lavished on the failure side of the 
educational problem, until public opinion is fairly alive 
to the necessity of some action. The time is, therefore, 
ripe for a positive statement of educational policy. 
Many schools have succeeded. Let us read the story of 
the good work. Efficient educational systems are in 
operation. Let us model the less successful experiments 
on those more successful ones. 

Circumstances force people to live in one place, to see 
one set of surroundings and meet one kind of folks, 
until they are led to believe, almost inevitably, that their 
kind is the kind. Schools are the victims of just such 
provincialism. Although the school superintendents and 
principals, and some of the school teachers meet their 
co-workers from other cities, the people whose children 
attend the schools almost never have an opportunity to 
learn intelligently what other schools are doing. This 
city develops one educational idea, and that city develops 
another idea. Although both ideas may deserve wide- 
spread consideration, and perhaps universal adoption, 
they will fail to measure up to the full stature of their 
value unless the people in all communities learn about 
them intelligently. 



CHAPTEE I 
THE NEW BASIS FOR EDUCATION^ 

I Can There Be a New Basis? 

Can there be a new basis for education? Does the 
foundation upon which education rests really change? 
Is the educational system of one age necessarily unfitted 
to provide for the educational needs of the next ? These, 
and a multitude of the similar questions which people 
interested in educational progress are asking themselves, 
arise out of the process of transition that is seemingly 
one of the fundamental propositions of the universe. 
All things change, and are changing, from the smallest 
cell to the most highly organized creature, the noblest 
mountain range, and the vastest sun in the heavens. 
To-day differs from yesterday as to-morrow must differ 
from to-day. All things are becoming. 

Test this statement with the observed facts of life. 
Here is a garden, well-planted and watered. The soil 
is loamy and black. On all its surface there is nothing, 
save a clod here and there, to relieve the warm, moist 
regularity. Come to-morrow and the level surface is 
broken by tiny green shoots which have appeared at 
intervals, thrusting through the top crust. Next week 
the black earth is striped with rows of green. Onions, 
beets, lettuce, and peas are coming up. Go back to the 
hills which you climbed in boyhood, ascend their chasmed 
sides and note how even they have changed. Each year 

1 Portions of this chapter originally appeared in The Journal of 
Education. 

24 



THE NEW BASIS FOR EDUCATION 25 

some part of them has disappeared into the rapid tor- 
rent. Had you been there in April, you might have 
seen particles of your beloved hills in every water-course, 
hurrying toward the lowlands and the sea. While you 
watch them, the clouds change in the sky, the sunset 
wanes, and the forest covers the bared hills. Nature, 
fickle mistress of our destinies, spreads a never-ending 
panorama before our eyes that we may recognize the one 
great law of her being, — the law of progression. 

II Social Change 

How well does this principle of change apply to the 
organization of society! The absolute monarchy of one 
age yields to the semi-democracy of the next. Yesterday 
the church itself traded in men 's bodies, — holding slaves, 
and accepting, without question, the proceeds of slavery. 
To-day machines replace men in a thousand industries. 
To-morrow slavery is called into question, until in the 
dim-glowering nineteenth century, men will struggle and 
die by tens of thousands ; — on the one side, those who 
believe that the man should be the slave ; on the other, 
those who hold that the slavery of the machine is alone 
necessary and just. Thus is every social institution 
altered from age to age. Thus is effected that trans- 
formation which men have chosen to call progress. 

How profoundly does this truth apply to the raw 
material of education, — the children who enroll in the 
schools ! Under your very eyes they lose their childish 
ways, feel their steps along the precipice of adolescence, 
enter the wonderland of imagery and idealism, and pass 
on into the maturity of life. How vain is our hope that 
the child may remain a child ; how worthless our prayer 
that adult life shall never lay her heavy burden of cares 
and responsibilities upon his beloved shoulders. Even 



26 THE NEW EDUCATION 

while you raise your hands in supplication, the child has 
passed from your life forever, leaving naught save a man 
to confront you. 

From these mighty scythe strokes which change sweeps 
across the meadows of time, naught is exempt. The 
petals fall from the fairest flower; the bluest sky be- 
comes overcast; the greatest feats of history are sur- 
passed ; and the social machinery, adequate for the needs 
of one age, sinks into the insignificance of desuetude in 
the age which follows. Thus does the inevitable come 
to pass. Thus does the social institution, wrought 
through centuries of turmoil and anguish, become use- 
less in the newer civilization which is arising on every 
hand. The educational system in its inception was well 
founded, but the changes of time invalidate the original 
idea. Yesterday the school fulfilled the needs of men. 
To-day it fails to meet a situation which reshapes itself 
with each rising and each setting of the sun. 

Each epoch must have its institutions. With the work 
of the past as a background, the present must con- 
stantly reshape the institutions which the past has 
bequeathed to it. These modified institutions, handed on 
in turn by the present, must again be rebuilt to meet 
the needs of the future; and so on through each suc- 
ceeding age. 

Ill Keeping Up with the Times 

At times the march of progress is so rapid that even 
the most advanced grow breathless with attempts to keep 
abreast of the vanguard. Again, marking time for ages, 
progressive movements seem wholly dead, and the path 
to the future is overgrown with tradition, and blocked 
by oblivion and decay. The rapid advances of the nine- 
teenth century, challenging the quickest to keep pace, 



THE NEW BASIS FOE EDUCATION 27 

forced upon many institutions surroundings wholly for- 
eign to their bent and scope. 

Nowhere is this more true than in the case of the edu- 
cational system, which had its rise in an age of individ- 
ualized industry and governmental non-interference, and 
now faces a newly inaugurated socialization of industry 
and an impromptu system of government control. 

The new basis of education lies in the changes which 
the nineteenth century wrought in industry, transform- 
ing village life into city dwelling, and substituting for 
the skilled mechanic, using a tool, the machine, .employ- 
ing the unskilled worker. The men of the eighteenth 
century made political institutions, and were content 
with democracy ; the men of the nineteenth century, ac- 
cepting government as it stood, built up a new industry. 
The society which we in the twentieth century must erect 
upon the political and industrial triumphs of our fore- 
fathers, can never be successful unless it recognizes the 
fundamental character of the issues which nineteenth 
century industry and eighteenth century politics have 
brought into twentieth century life. 

Is it too much to ask that the school stand foremost in 
this recognition of change, when it is in the school that 
the ideas of the new generation are moulded, tempered, 
and burnished? May we not expect that in its lessons 
to the young our educational system shall speak the 
language of the twentieth century rather than that of 
the eighteenth? 

IV Education in the Early Home 

Before the modern system of industry had its incep- 
tion, while the old hand trades still held sway, at a time 
when the household was the center of work and pleasure, 
when the family made its butter, cheese, oatmeal, ale, 



28 THE NEW EDUCATION 

clothing, tools, and utensils, — in such an atmosphere of 
domestic industry, Froebel wrote his famous '^Educa-. 
tion of Man. ' ' Note this description of the way in which 
a father may educate his son. ^'The son accompanies 
his father everywhere, to the field and to the garden, 
to the shop and to the counting house, to the forest and 
to the meadow; in the care of domestic animals and in 
the making of small articles of household furniture; in 
the splitting, sawing, and piling up of wood ; in all the 
work his father's trade or calling involves."^ In an- 
other passage he calls upon parents, ''more particularly 
fathers (for to their special care and guidance the child 
ripening into boyhood is confided)," to contemplate 
"their parental duties in child guidance;"^ and he 
prefaces this exhortation with a long list of illustrations, 
suggesting the methods which may be pursued by the 
farm laborer, the goose-herd, the gardener, the forester, 
the blacksmith, and other tradesmen and craftsmen, in 
the education of their sons. Any such man, Froebel 
points out, may take his child at the age of two or three 
and teach him some of the simple rules of his trade. 
How different is the position of the son of a workman 
in a modern American city ! An American city dweller 
reading Froebel's discussion would not conceive of it as 
applying in any sense to him, or to his life. 

V City Life and the New Basis for Education 

The very thought of city life precludes the possibilitj^ 
of home work. The narrow house, the tenement, the 
great shop or factory, on the one hand, prevent the 
mechanic from carrying on his trade near his family; 

1 ' ' The Education of Man, ' ' F. Froebel. Translated by W. N. 
Halliman, New York; D. Appleton & Co. 1909, p. 103. 
2 Ibid., p, 187. 



THE NEW BASIS FOE EDUCATION 29 

and on the other hand, make it impossible for the father 
whose work lies far from his home to give his boys the 
''special care and guidance" about which Froebel writes. 

The system of industry which was established in 
England during the closing decades of the eighteenth 
century, and which secured a foothold in both Germany 
and the United States during the first half of the nine- 
teenth century, has revolutionized the basis of our lives. 
The workshop has been transplanted from the home to 
the factory; both men and women leave their homes 
for ten, eleven, or even twelve hours a day to carry on 
their industrial activities; great centers of population 
collect about the centers of industry; the farm, the 
flock of geese, the garden, the forest, and the black- 
smith shop disappear; food, clothing, and other neces- 
saries of life — formerly the product of home industry — 
are produced in great factories; and the city home, 
stripped of its industrial functions, restricted in scope, 
robbed of its adults, presents little opportunity for the 
education of the city child. Standing on the thresh- 
hold of his meager dwelling, this child of six looks for- 
ward to a life which must be based on the instruction 
provided in a public school system. 

The country boy still has his ten-acre lot, where he 
may run and play. There are flowers and freckles 
in the spring; kite-flying, fishing, hunting, and trap- 
ping in summer and autumn. The general farm is a 
storehouse of useful information in rudimentary form. 
From day to day and from year to year the country 
boy may learn and enjoy. 

The city boy is differently situated. His playground 
is the street, where he plays under the wheels of wagons, 
automobiles, and trolley cars; or else he plays in a 
public playground in company with hundreds, or even 



30 THE NEW EDUCATION 

thousands, of other children. Even then his activities 
are restricted by city ordinances, monitors, policemen, 
and other exponents of law and order. 

The city home, whether tenement or single house, 
cannot begin to supply the opportunities for growth and 
development which were furnished by life in the open. 
"Where else, then, does the responsibility for such growth 
and development rest than upon the school? On the 
farm the boy learned his trade, as Froebel suggests, at 
the hands of his father. The father of the city boy 
spends his working hours in a mill, or in an office, where 
boys under fourteen or sixteen are forbidden by law to 
go. The city home is unavoidably deprived of the 
chance to provide adequate recreation or adequate voca- 
tional training for its children. The burden in both 
cases shifts to the school. 

A hundred years ago practically all industries were 
carried on in connection with the home. The weaver, 
the carpenter, the hatter, the cobbler, the miller, lived 
and worked on the same premises. Then steam was 
applied to industry; the machine replaced the man; 
semi-skilled and unskilled labor replaced skilled labor; 
great numbers of men and women, and even of children, 
crowded together in factories to spin thread, make bolts 
and washers, weave ribbon, bake bread, manufacture 
machinery, or do some one of the many hundreds of 
things now done in ^factories. The change from home 
industry to factory industry is well named the Indus- 
trial Revolution. It completely overturned the estab- 
lished and accepted means of making a living. 

The industrial upheaval has changed every phase of 
modern life. Industry itself has replaced apprentice- 
ship by a degree of specialization undreamed of in 
primitive life. From the superintendent to the office 



THE NEW BASIS FOE EDUCATION 31 

boy, from the boss roller to the yard laborer, from the 
chief clerk to the stenographer, the work of men and 
women is monotonous and specialized. The city has 
grown up as a logical product of an industrial system 
which centers thousands, or even tens of thousands, of 
workmen in one place of employment. The city home 
differs fundamentally from the country home as the 
city differs from the country. 

The changes now going on in farming are no less sig- 
nificant than those which the nineteenth century wit- 
nessed in manufacturing. Science has been applied to 
agriculture. Old methods are brought into question. 
Intensive study and specialization are widespread. The 
time has passed when a farmer can afford to neglect 
the agricultural bulletins or papers. To be successful, 
he must be a trained specialist in his line, and the school 
and college are called upon to provide the training. 

No individual is responsible for these changes. They 
have come as the logical product of a long series of dis- 
coveries and inventions. New methods, built upon the 
ideas and methods of the past, have created a new civil- 
ization. 

The civilized world, reorganized and reconstituted, re- 
built in all of its economic phases, demands a new teach- 
ing which shall relate men and women to the changed 
conditions of life. This is the new basis for educa- 
tion, — this the new foundation upon which must be 
erected a superstructure of educational opportunity for 
succeeding generations. It remains for education to 
recognize the change and to remodel the institutions of 
education in such a way that they shall meet the new 
needs of the new life. 



CHAPTER II 

TEACHING BOYS AND GIKLS 

I The New School Machinery 

The influence which the industrial changes of the past 
hundred years has had on education is considerable. 
With the transformation of the home workshop into the 
factory has come the transition from rural and village 
life to life in great industrial cities and towns. The 
introduction of specialized machinery has placed upon 
education the burden of vocational training. More 
important still, it has so augmented the size of the 
educational problem that an intricate system of school 
machinery has been devised to keep the whole in order. 

The rural, or village, school was a one or two-room 
affair, housing a handful of pupils. Aside from matters 
of discipline, the administration of the school was 
scarcely a problem. General superintendents, associate 
superintendents, compulsory attendance laws, card index 
systems, and purchasing departments were unknown. 
The school was a simple, personal business conducted by 
the teacher in very much the same way that the comer 
grocer conducted his store — on faith and memory. 

The growth of cities and towns necessitated the intro- 
duction of elaborate school machinery. In place of a 
score of pupils, thousands, tens, and even hundreds of 
thousands were placed under the same general authority. 
City life made some form of administrative machinery 
inevitable. 

The increasing size of the school system, — and in new, 
growing cities the school system increases with a rapid- 
ity equal to the rate of growth of the population, — ^leads 

32 



TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 33 

to increase in class size. A school of twenty pupils is 
still common in rural districts. In the elementary grades 
of American city schools, investigators find fifty, sixty, 
and in some extreme cases, seventy pupils under the 
charge of one teacher, while the average number, per 
teacher, is about forty. 

Recrimination is idle. The obvious fact remains that 
the rate of growth in school population is greater than 
the rate of growth in the school plant. The schools 
in many cities have not caught up with their educational 
problem. The result is a multiplication of administra- 
tive problems, not the least of which is the question of 
class size. 

II Rousseau Versus a Class of Forty 

A toilsome journey it is from the education of an indi- 
vidual child by an individual teacher (Rousseau's Emile) 
to the education of forty children by one teacher (the 
normal class in American elementary city schools). 
Rousseau pictured an ideal ; we face a reality — complex, 
expanding, at times almost menacing. 

The difference between Rousseau's ideal and the mod- 
ern actuality is more serious than it appears superficially. 
Rousseau's idea permitted the teacher to treat the child 
as an individuality, studying the traits and peculiarities 
of the pupil, building up where weakness appeared, and 
directing freakish notions and ideas into conventional 
channels. The modern city school with one teacher and 
forty pupils places before the teacher a constant temp- 
tation, which at times reaches the proportions of an over- 
mastering necessity, to treat the group of children as 
if each child were like all the rest. A teacher who can 
individualize forty children, understand the peculiarities 
of each child, and teach in a way that will enable each 
of the children to benefit fully by her instruction, is 



34 THE NEW EDUCATION 

indeed a master, perhaps it would be fairer to say a 
super-master in pedagogy. A class of forty is almost 
inevitably taught as a group. 

There is another feature about the large school sys- 
tem which is even more disastrous to the welfare of the 
individual child. Rousseau studied the individual to be 
educated, and then prescribed the course of study. The 
city teacher, no matter how intimately she may be ac- 
quainted with the needs of her children, has little or no 
say in deciding upon the subjects which she is to teach 
her class. Such matters are for the most part deter- 
mined by a group of officials — ^principals, superintend- 
ents, and boards of education, — all of whom are engaged 
primarily in administrative work, and some of whom 
have never taught at all, nor entered a psychological 
laboratory, nor engaged in any other occupation that 
would give first-hand, practical, or theoretical knowledge 
of the problems encountered in determining a course of 
study. 

A course of study must be devised, however, even 
though some of the responsible parties have no first- 
hand knowledge of the points at issue. The method by 
which it is devised is of peculiar importance to this dis- 
cussion. The administrative officials, having in mind 
an average child, prepare a course of study which will 
meet that average child's needs. Theoretically, the plan 
is admirable. It suffers from one practical defect, — 
there is no such thing as an average child. 

Ill The Fallacious "Average" 

Averages are peculiarly tempting to Americans. They 
supply the same deeply-felt want in statistics that head- 
lines do in newspapers. They tell the story at a glance. 
In this peculiar case the story is necessarily false. 



TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 35 

An average may be taken only of like things. It is 
possible to average the figures 3, 4, and 8 by adding them 
together and dividing by 3. The average is 5. Such 
a process is mathematically correct, because all of the 
units comprising the 3, 4, and 8 are exactly alike. One 
of the premises of mathematics is that all units are alike, 
hence they may be averaged. 

Unlike mathematical units, all children are different. 
They differ in physical, in mental, and in spiritual qual- 
ities. Their hair is different in color and in texture. 
Their feet and hands vary in size. Some children are 
apt at mathematics, others at drawing, and still others 
at both subjects. Some children have a strong sense of 
moral obligation, — an active conscience, — others have 
little or no moral stamina. No two children in a family 
are alike, and no two children in a school-room are alike. 
After an elaborate computation of hereditary possibili- 
ties, biologists announce that the chance of any two 
human creatures being exactly alike is one in five sep- 
tillions. In simple English, it is quite remote. 

IV The Five Ages of ChilcUiood 
A very ingenious statement of the case is made by 
Dr. Bird T. Baldwin. Children, says Dr. Baldwin, have 
five ages, — 

1. A chronological age, 4. A moral age, 

2. A physical age, 5. A school age. 

3. A mental age. 

Two children, born on the same day, have the same age 
in years. One is bound to grow faster than the other 
in some physical respect. Therefore the two children 
have different physical ages, or rates of development. 
In the same way they have differing mental and moral 
ages. The school age, a resultant of the first three, is 



36 



THE NEW EDUCATION 



a record of progress in school. Even when children are 
born on the same day, the chances that they will grow 
physically, mentally, and morally at exactly the same 
rate, and will make exactly the same progress in school, 
are remote indeed. School children are, therefore, inevit- 
ably different. 

V Age Distribution in One Grade 
A very effective illustration of the differences in chron- 
ological age, in school age, and in the rate of progress 
in school is furnished in the 1911 report of the superin- 
tendent of schools for Springfield, Mass. There are in 
this report a series of figures dealing with the ages, 
and time in school, of fifth-grade pupils in Springfield. 
The first table shows the number of years in school and 
the age of all the fifth-grade pupils. 



Table 1 

Age and Time in School, Fifth Grade, Springfield, 
Decemher, 1911 

Years in Ages 



School 5 


6 7 8 


9 


10 


11 


12 


13 14 15 16 17 18 Total 


1 


1 

1 

9 

63 


2 
12 


2 

1 

10 


1 

3 






1 


2 


.... 2 


1 

38 

162 


1 

25 

200 


9 


3 


.... 6 


80 


4 




. 450 


5 




17 


178 


131 


47 


14 


2 






. 389 








6 




1 


11 
1 


120 
3 
1 


60 

46 

4 


29 
29 
17 


3 
8 
4 
4 
1 


1 . 
1 .. 
1 .. 


1 . 


. 224 


7 




88 


8 






28 


9 

10 

11 


5 
1 


12 






13 






Total . . 


.. .. 8 


219 


416 


329 


171 


102 


26 


3 . 


1 . 


. 1,275 



.TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 37 

Theoretically, children in Springfield enter the school 
at six, and spend one year in each grade. If all of the 
children in the Springfield schools had lived up to this 
theory, there would be 1,275 eleven years of age, and 
1,275 in the fifth grade. A glance at the table shows 
that only 131, or about 10 per cent of the children, are 
both eleven years of age and five years in the school. 
Among the 1,275 fifth-grade children, 389, or 31 per 
cent, have been in school five years, and 329, or 26 per 
cent, are eleven years of age. 

The superintendent follows this general table with 
other tables giving a more detailed analysis of over and 
under age pupils, and of rate of progress in school. 

Table 2 

Age and Progress Groups of Fifth-Grade Pupils in 
Springfield, December, 1911 

Young Normal Over-age Total 

Per Per Per Per 

No. Cent No. Cent No. Cent No. Cent 

Rapid 435 34 74 6 31 2 540 42 

Normal 195 16 131 10 63 5 389 31 

Slow 13 1 124 10 209 16 346 27 

Total 643 51 329 26 303 23 1,275 100 

The inferences from Table 2 are very clear. Of the 
1,275 fifth-grade pupils, 435, or 34 per cent, are not 
only under-age for the grade, but they have progressed 
at more than normal speed. They are the exceptionally 
capable pupils of the grade. At the other extreme we 
find 209 children, or 16 per cent of all in the grade, 
who need special attention because they are both over- 
age and slow. Feeble-minded children rarely advance 
beyond the second grade; hence we know that none of 



38 THE NEW EDUCATION 

these are feeble-minded, but among their number will 
be found many who will be little profited by the ordi- 
nary curriculum; 110 of them are already 12 years 
old, and 75 are 13 years old. A majority of them will, 
in all probability, drop out of school as soon as they 
reach the age of 14, unless prior to that time some new 
element of interest is introduced that will make a strong 
appeal; for example, some activity toward a vocation. 

A further study of the over-age column shows that 31 
pupils, 2 per cent, are over-age, but they have reached 
their present position in less than usual time ; while 63 
of them, also over-age, have required the full five years 
to reach their present grade position. Unless by limit- 
ing the required work of these over-age pupils to the 
essentials, or by some administrative arrangement involv- 
ing special grouping with relatively small numbers in 
a class, so that we can in the one case maintain, and in 
the other case bring about, accelerated progress, there 
is little likelihood that any large number will remain in 
school to complete the ninth grade, much less take a high 
school course ; for four years hence their ages will range 
from 16 to 18 years. The 124 pupils who are of normal 
age, but slow, are also subjects for special attention, for 
they have repeated from one to three grades, or have 
failed to secure from two to six half-yearly promotions, 
and are in danger of acquiring the fatal habit of fail- 
ure, if they have not already acquired it. 

The superintendent then goes on to emphasize the im- 
perative duty resting on each principal, to examine and 
to understand the varying capacities of individual chil- 
dren in his school. Without such an understanding real 
educational progress cannot be made. 

This study is most illuminating. Nothing could more 
effectually show variation in individual children than 



■^ 



TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 39 

the difference in one city grade of the most obvious of 
characteristics — age and progress in school. The infi- 
nitely greater variations in the subtle characteristics 
that distinguish children can be more readily guessed 
at than measured. Under these circumstances, the 
attempt to prepare studies for an ''average child" is 
manifestly futile. The course may be organized, but 
it will hardly meet the needs of large numbers of the 
individual children who take it. 

VI Shall Child or Subject Matter Come First? 

The old education presupposed an average child, and 
then prepared a course of study which would fit his 
needs. The new education recognizes the absurdity of 
averaging unlike quantities, and accepts the ultimate 
truth that each child is an individual, differing in needs, 
capacity, outlook, energy, and enthusiasm from every 
other child. An arithmetic average can be struck, but 
when it is applied to children it is a hypothetical and 
not a real quantity. There is not, and never will be, 
an average child ; hence, a school system planned to meet 
the needs of the average child fits the needs of no child 
at all. 

Mathematics may be taught to the average child. So 
may history and geography. Wliile subject matter 
comes first in the minds of educators, a course of study 
designed to meet average conditions is a possibility. The 
moment, however, that the schools cease to teach subjects 
and begin to teach boj^s and girls, such a proceeding is 
out of the question. 

The temptation in a complex school system, where 
children are grouped by hundreds and thousands, to 
allow the detail of administration to overtop the func- 
tions of education is often irresistible. The teacher with 



40 THE NEW EDUCATION 

forty pupils learns to look upon her pupils as units. 
The superintendent and principals, seeking ardently for 
an overburdened commercial ideal named ''efficiency," 
sacrifice everything else to the perfection of the mechan- 
ism. Among the smooth clicking cogs, child individu- 
ality has only the barest chance for survival. 

VII The Vicious Practices of One "Good" School 

There are school systems in which organization has 
overgrown child welfare, in which pedagogy has usurped 
the place of teaching. In such systems the teacher 
teaches the prescribed course of study, whether or no. 
The officers of administration, aiming at some mechan- 
ical ideal, shape the schools to meet the requirements 
of system. 

The proneness of some teachers and school adminis- 
trators alike to overemphasize mechanics, and to under- 
emphasize the welfare of individual children is well 
illustrated in a recent statement by Dr. W. E. Chan- 
cellor, who, in writing of a first-hand investigation made 
in a city in the Northeast, describes a condition which 
he says "I know by fairly authoritative reports does 
exist in a considerable number of cities and towns — not 
merely in a school here and there, but generally and 
characteristically. 

"In the city to which I definitely refer," Dr. Chan- 
cellor continues, ''I found that the intermediate and 
grammar grade teachers had systematically, deliberately, 
and successfully sacrificed hundreds of boys and girls 
upon the altar of examinations to the fetish of good 
schools. They have been so anxious to have good 
schools that they have kept an average of 20 per cent 
of their pupils one grade lower than they belong. In 
some schools the average runs to above 35 per cent. 



TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 41 

''Some teachers and some school superintendents can- 
not see that the school is simply a machine for devel- 
oping boys and girls; cannot see that the machine in 
itself is worthless save as it contributes to human wel- 
fare. A school may be so good as actually to damage 
the souls and bodies of human beings. It damages 
their souls when the machine operators, seeking 75 per 
cent in every subject, keep boys and girls in gram- 
mar schools until they average sixteen years of age."^ 
Dr. Chancellor continues with a stinging arraign- 
ment of school officials who sacrifice children to 
systems. 

The article strikes an answering chord in the expe- 
riences of many men and women. A friend came re- 
cently to our bungalow, and, with a troubled face, spoke 
of his daughter's ill-health. 

''She is not sick," he said, "but just ailing. These 
first May days have taken her appetite. She needs the 
country air." 

The daughter was a dear little girl of twelve — any 
one might have envied the father of his treasure — and 
we offered to keep her with us for a month in the coun- 
try, and to go over her school work with her every day. 
The father accepted our proposal on the spot, but two 
days later he came back to say that he could not make 
the arrangements. 

"It cannot be done," he explained, "because the 
school will not let her off. I told the principal about 
my daughter's health and showed him the advantage 
of a month in the country with her school work care- 
fully supervised. Her scliool is rather crowded, and as 
I want her to go on with her class in the autumn, I 

1 Sacrificing Children, W. E. Chancellor, Journal of Education, 
Vol. 77, pp. 564-565 (May 22, 1913). 



42^ THE NEW EDUCATION 

asked him if he could arrange to keep her place for 
her. In reply he said, — 

*' 'I cannot do as you wish. Such cases as yours inter- 
fere seriously with the working of the school.' " 

VIII Boys and Girls — The One Object of Educational Activity 
Perhaps our language was not as temperate as it 
should have been, but we told that father something 
which we would fain repeat until every educator and 
every parent in the United States has heard it and 
written it on the tables of his heart, — 

THE ONE OBJECT OF EDUCATION IS TO ASSIST AND PREPARE 
CHILDREN TO LIVE. 

Why have we established a billion-dollar school system 
in the United States? Is it to pay teachers' salaries, 
to build new school houses, and to print text-books by 
the million? Hardly. These things are incidents of 
school business, but they are no more reason for the 
school's existence than fertilizer and seed are reasons 
for making a garden. Gardens are cultivated in order 
to secure plants and flowers; the school organization 
of which Americans so often boast exists to educate chil- 
dren. 

''Of course," you exclaim, "we knew that before." 
Did you? Then why was my friend forced to choose 
between the wreck of his daughter's health and the dis- 
arrangement of a bit of school machinery? Why is 
Dr. Chancellor able to describe a situation existing 
' ' generally and characteristically, ' ' in which the welfare 
of children is bartered away for high promotion aver- 
ages ? The truth is that society still tolerates, and often 
accepts, the belief that the purpose of education is the 
formation of a school system. We have yet to learn 
that, to use Herbert Spencer's phrase, the object of 



TEACHING BOYS AND GIRLS 43 

education is the preparation of children for complete 
living. 

Education exists for the purpose of preparing and 
assisting children to live. To do that work effectively, 
it must devote only so much effort to school administra- 
tion and to school machinery as will perform for boys 
and girls that very effective service. 

No two children are alike, and no two children have 
exactly similar needs. There are, however, certain 
kinds of needs which all children have in common. It 
is obviously impossible to discuss in the abstract the 
needs of any individual child. It is just as obviously 
possible to analyze child needs, and to classify them in 
workable groups. It is true that all children are differ- 
ent; so are all roses different, yet all have petals and 
thorns in common. Similarly, there are certain needs 
which are common to all children who play, who grow, 
who live among their fellows, and who expect to do some - 
thing in life. The matter may be stated more concretely 
thus, — 

I. The school exists to assist and prepare children to 
live. 
II. Living involves three kinds of needs, which it is 
the duty of the school to understand and inter- 
pret. 

1. Needs which the child has because he is a 

physical being. 

2. Needs which result from the child's surround- 

ings. 

3. Needs which arise in connection with the things 

which the child hopes to do in life. 

A further analysis of these groups of needs constitutes 
the subject matter of the next chapter. 



CHAPTEE III 
FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN 

I Child Growth— A Primary Factor in Child Life 

In the first place children have certain needs because 
in common with many other living creatures they de- 
velop through spontaneous, self -expressive activity. The 
growth of children is a growth in body, in mind and in 
soul. 

During the first six years of life the bodies of children 
grow rapidly, and during these years we wisely make 
no attempt to train their minds. From six to twelve 
or thirteen body growth is slower, the mind is having its 
turn at development, and during these years the chil- 
dren start to school. 

Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with 
different races and different individuals, all normal chil- 
dren enter the fairyland of adolescence. Life takes on 
new meanings, human relationships are closer, great 
currents of feeling run deep and strong through the 
child's being, because there is coming into his life one 
of the most wonderful of human experiences — ^the dawn- 
ing of sex consciousness. 

This period of sex awakening produces a profound 
change in the lives of boys, but it works an even greater 
transformation in the lives of girls. For both sexes it 
is a time of rapid physical growth and of severe mental 
and spiritual strain. It is a time when the energies of 
the body are so entirely devoted to the development of 
sex functions that great mental stress should above all 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 45 

things be avoided, yet it is at this very time — think of 
it! — when we send our boys and girls to high school, 
and force them to spend a great part of their waking 
hours in severe intellectual efforts. 

II Children Need Health First 

Had we set out with the deliberate intention of tortur- 
ing our children we could have devised no better method. 
If we had applied ourselves to physiology, found out 
the time when the child needed the most energy for 
physical growth and the most relief from mental strain, 
and had then set out to plan a course of study which 
would wreck his health, we should have built a school 
system which gave him the comparatively easy work of 
the elementary grades until he was fourteen, and then, 
at the most critical period of his life, sent him into a 
new system of schools to study new, abstract subjects. 

What is it that our children must have before they 
can acquire anything else ? Health ! We cry the word 
aloud, emphasizing and exhorting — nothing without 
health! Yet, despite our protest, at a period of rapid 
physical growth, at the time of severe spiritual trial, 
there yawns the high school — grim for boys, ghastly 
for girls — with its ever-recurring demand: ''Work, 
study; study, work." 

Considering the child's physical welfare, the high 
school is placed at exactly the point (fourteen to eight- 
een years) where it is best calculated to destroy the 
delicate balance of sanity, rendering its victims unable 
to stand the burden and heat of life's later day. 

We cannot escape the fact that children have bodies. 
The first duty of the schools, therefore, is to recognize 
the existence of these bodies by giving them due atten- 
tion, particularly at the crucial periods of physical 



46 THE NEW EDUCATION 

growth. Therefore every school must provide as much 
physical training as is necessary to insure normal body 
growth at each particular age. 

Then there are certain rules of health — "hygiene," 
they are called — which should be taught to every child. 
Since bodies do not stay normal if they are abused every 
child should have right ideas of body care. 

Most important of all, the schools must instruct chil- 
dren in sex hygiene because the growth of sex conscious- 
ness is one of the most significant of the changes which 
occur in the life of a child. 

''But must sex hygiene be taught in the school?" 
you will ask. 

Undoubtedly it must. If it were a choice between 
sex instruction in the home or in the school, there would 
be no hesitation about delegating it to the home; but 
since most homes neglect the discussion of sex matters, 
leaving the children to gain their knowledge of sex from 
unreliable sources on the streets, the choice lies between 
the perversion of sex as it is taught on the streets, and 
the science of sex as it should be taught in the schools. 

Ill Play as a Means to Growth 

Children's minds grow as well as their bodies — grow 
in retention, in grasp, and in power. Memory work 
(the learning of poems, songs, and formulas) helps to 
make minds more retentive, while all studies, but par- 
ticularly number work, increase mental grasp and power. 

Besides body growth and mind growth all children 
have soul growth. They develop human sympathy, and 
they are interested in esthetic things. To supply these 
needs the school must give the child literature and art. 
Simple these lessons must be, particularly in the elemen- 
tary grades; but there is scarcely a child who will not 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 47 

respond to the noble in literature or the beautiful in 
art if these things are presented to him in an under- 
standable way. 

The bodies, minds, and souls of children grow. They 
are all sacred. Each child needs a normal body, an 
active mind, a healthy and a beautiful soul. We dare 
not develop bodies at the expense of minds and souls, 
but neither may we educate minds at the expense of 
souls and bodies — a tendency which has been fearfully 
prevalent in American education. 

The most valuable means of securing this all-impor- 
tant growth is "play," which Froebel said contained 
the germinal leaves of all later life. Growth comes 
only through expression. One does not develop muscle 
by watching the strong man in the circus, but by exercis- 
ing. The child's chief means of expression is through 
play, hence play is the child's method of securing 
growth. 

In their earliest infancy children play. Their frolics 
and antics are really ''puppy play," the product of 
overflowing life and animal spirits. At this "puppy 
play" stage, when the child plays merely to work off 
surplus energy, the most essential thing is a place to 
play, and the school must meet this need by providing 
playgrounds. 

As children grow older they turn to a more advanced 
type of play. Instead of romping and frolicking indi- 
vidually they play in groups. It is in these group plays 
that the child gets his first idea of the duty which he 
owes to his fellows, his first glimmering of a social sense. 
In the home and in the school he is in a subordinate 
position, but in the "gang," or "set," he is as good as 
the next. Group play teaches democracy. More than 
that, group play has a moral value. Each one must 



48 THE NEW EDUCATION 

play fair. Those who do not are ruthlessly ostracized, 
so children learn to abide by the decision of the crowd. 
While children's plays should be as un trammeled as 
possible, it is the duty of the school to stimulate group 
play by suggesting new games, organizing athletic meets, 
getting up interclass sports, and in other ways super- 
vising and directing games and sports. 

In the course of the child 's life play takes another 
form, the form of creative work. Boys build wagons 
and houses; girls cook, and make dolls. The *' puppy 
play ' ' of their early childhood has evolved into a form of 
creative activity that sooner or later grips every human 
creature. We want to plant, to build, to plan, to make. 
It is the creative power within us yearning for expres- 
sion, hence the well-planned school will provide simple 
forms of manual training by means of which both boys 
and girls will be taught to use their hands so skillfully 
that they may translate an idea into a concrete product. 

Civilization has been described as the art of playing. 
Big folks are apt to look down on play because most of 
it is done by children. But listen, big folks: When 
Anna plays dolls she does it in a frank, serious, whole- 
souled way that you seldom imitate. There is no activity 
so vital to the child as play, nor does any man succeed 
at his work unless he can '^play at if with the fervor 
and abandon of a child. 

IV Some Things Which a Child Must Learn 

So much for the needs which a child has because he 
is a living creature. Suppose we turn now to some other 
needs — the needs which arise because the child is in a 
great universe and surrounded by his fellowmen. Wher- 
ever a child lives and whatever he does he must always 
face certain surrounding conditions. First among his 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 49 

surroundings are people. No one except Robinson Cru- 
soe can get away from people, and even Crusoe had his 
man Friday. 

Since we are compelled, whether we like it or not, 
to live with people, the school must teach language (oral 
and written), in order that the children may learn to 
tell others what they think, and may likewise understand 
the thoughts of others. The better the language the 
more clearly can they understand each other. 

In order that children may have a proper respect for 
the rights of others the school should teach ethics by 
means of simple stories about people. Teachers should 
explain how men live in groups, and how, if group life 
is to be tolerable, men must respect each other's rights. 

Perhaps in the upper elementary grades, and certainly 
in the high school, there should be some simple work in 
psychology in order that children may know how peo- 
ple's minds work. 

Then besides the people of the present there are the 
people of the past, and, because the things which they 
did enable us to live as we do, children should be taught 
history, particularly the history of their own country, 
state, and town. 

The child comes into contact, in addition to people, 
with the institutions which people have constructed — 
the home, the school, the state, the industrial system. 
Every child who grows to maturity will participate in 
the activity of these institutions, hence every child should 
be taught about them. In the last two years of the 
elementary grades civics can be successfully taught, 
since even at twelve years children are interested in the 
things which are happening around them. In the high 
schools this work can be carried much further in the 
form of social and industrial problem courses. 



50 THE NEW EDUCATION 

The most -aniversal and by far the largest of the 
child's surroundings consist of the things about him. 
He lives in a world, a very little world to be sure, but to 
him it is great; and a knowledge of the world comes 
through a study of geography. Beginning with the 
geography of his native town (not with the basin of the 
Ganges) he can learn successively about the geography 
of the county, the state, the country, and then of the 
world. 

Surrounding the child on every hand are plants and 
animals. Nature study gives him an intelligent inter- 
est in them. As he grows older general nature study 
may be subdivided into geology, botany, zoology; and 
the forces of nature may be examined in astronomy, 
chemistry, and physics: but most of these subjects are 
too specialized for the elementary grades, and should 
appear, if at all, in the high schools. 

There is a group of courses which belongs in every 
school — elementary school as well as high school — 
namely, the courses which prepare children for life 
activity. Growth and training in the art of living en- 
able children to fulfill the third function of their being 
— that of doing. Every man and every woman needs 
work in order to live, and it is a part of the duty of 
education to prepare them for that work. 

First of all, as modem society has developed, every 
man and many women need an income-producing trade 
or occupation ; hence it is the duty of the schools to pro- 
vide trade and professional educations (really the same 
thing under different names). No child should be per- 
mitted to leave the schools until he is proficient in some 
income-giving work. The character of the teaching 
must be altered to suit the locality, but the principle 
is absolute. 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 51 

Further, since men should not devote their entire lives 
to the same task, because they require a change of occupa- 
tion, the school should aim to provide an avocation, or 
secondary occupation, which may occupy leisure hours. 
Manual training, agriculture, art work, and civics will 
supply different people with occupations for spare time. 

Finally, since one of the chief duties of society is to 
insure a healthy and increasingly valuable supply of 
human beings, no one should leave the schools without a 
thorough domestic training, including training for par- 
enthood. While this training should be given in a 
measure to boys, it should be intended primarily for 
girls, and should include biology, hygiene, chemistry, 
dietetics, psychology, and nursing. Although the ele- 
mentary grades can provide only the simplest training 
along these lines that training should be given to every 
future housekeeper and mother. 

V What Schools Must Provide to Meet Child Needs 

If, up to this point, we have rightly described child 
needs, the school must be so organized as to provide for 
growth and play, for instructing the child in a knowl- 
edge of people, institutions, things and ideas, and for 
preparing every child to do his work in life. 

These subjects must be so apportioned over the grades 
that each child has the benefit of them. The high school 
is a continuation of the elementary school. It is in the 
high school that children should begin to specialize, be- 
cause specialization before the beginning of adolescence 
is undesirable; but since, in many localities, almost all 
of the children leave before reaching the high school, 
these subjects must be taught in the elementary grades. 
Certain things every child must know. If he is going 
to drop school at fourteen, as three-quarters of the 



52 THE NEW EDUCATION 

American school children do, he must be reached in the 
first eight school grades. If he goes to high school he 
may there be given an opportunity to complete and in- 
tensify the education which the elementary school has 
started. 

We believe that these fundamental principles of edu- 
cation are sufficiently flexible to fit any community in 
the United States ; they will apply to places of the most 
divergent school needs. 

VI The Educational Work of the Small Town 

Let us begin by applying the scheme to a mining 
village of three thousand inhabitants, a typical indus- 
trial community. 

In this village more than nine-tenths of the children 
leave school at or before fourteen years of age, so that 
whatever school training they get must be secured be- 
tween the ages of six and fourteen. 

The kind of activities that the children will take up 
in life is fixed by the custom of the town. The great 
majority of the boys go into the mines or shops, while 
practically all of the girls help around the home until 
they marry. A small number work in stores and fac- 
tories. 

The life is rather primitive; the houses are set far 
apart; the children have an abundance of play space; 
they are required to do chores in homes where they re- 
ceive little home training. The town affords an un- 
paralleled opportunity to learn nasty things in a nasty 
way. 

Almost all of the educational work in such a town 
must be done in the elementary schools. While high 
school facilities may be afforded they will appeal to a 
vanishingly small percentage of the children. 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN 53 

The elementary schools in such a village must provide 
organized games for the younger children and organized 
sports for the older ones ; a sufficient amount of physical 
training to insure robust bodies; careful instruction in 
physiology, body hygiene, and sex hygiene ; simple man- 
ual training for the younger children ; thorough prepa- 
ration in the reading and writing of English ; the funda- 
mentals of numbers; geography with particular refer- 
ence to the geographic conditions in the immediate local- 
ity; civics and history — particularly American history; 
a thorough drill in English and American literature ; a 
minimum amount of instruction in fine art — drawing, 
painting, modeling ; an extensive system of nature study, 
supplemented by field trips. 

This course should be required of boys and girls alike. 
In addition to these studies the boys in a coal-mining 
village should receive careful instruction in geology, par- 
ticularly in the mineralogy of the region in which the 
mine is located; technical training in mining, drafting, 
and shop work; and a sufficient training in agriculture 
to enable them to make good kitchen gardens, since gar- 
dening is one of the chief avocations of men in such a 
community. 

Parallel to this special training for boys the schools 
should provide for girls a thorough course in domestic 
science, with particular emphasis on economical purchas- 
ing, and an education for parenthood, including hy- 
giene, dietetics, psychology, and nursing. 

Such a course of study given in a typical mining vil- 
lage would tend to make of the boys educated, trained 
workmen, and of the girls educated, trained mothers. 
To be sure this course would not make of the boys rail- 
road presidents or United States senators ; but even that 
is not a drawback because, incredible as it may sound 



54 THE NEW EDUCATION 

to many old-fashioned ears, the vast majority of these 
boys will be miners and mechanics. The question is, 
therefore. Shall they be good miners or bad ones? 
United States senatorships bother them not a whit. 

If there are, as there always will be in such a village, 
a few exceptional children who desire more advanced 
work, the teacher can do exactly what he does now — 
namely, give them special instruction. 

Such an educational system as that outlined would 
require more training in the teachers, and an addi- 
tional outlay for tools and school-rooms, but it would 
train the boys and girls of the village to live their lives 
effectively. 

The mine-village educational problem is rendered espe- 
cially easy of solution because the community is small 
in size, and because there are only two occupations, min- 
ing and homekeeping, into which the children go. 

A similar situation may be found in most of the agri- 
cultural districts, except that the boys take up farm- 
ing instead of mining, while the girls are called upon 
to participate in farm work to the extent of caring for 
chickens and pigs, and sometimes for milk. In such an 
agricultural community the same outline for study might 
apply, except that in training for occupations boys 
should be taught the facts regarding soil fertility, fruit 
culture, dairying, market gardening, and other agri- 
cultural problems, while girls need instruction which will 
fit them for domestic life and for parenthood. 

In New York State a number of agricultural high 
schools giving a course such as the one just hinted at, 
have met with marked success. Most country children 
do not go to high school, however — although they are 
doing so in increasing numbers — and hence the necessity 
for shaping the elementary course along similar lines. 



PITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 55 

VII The Educational Problems of an Industrial Community 

When the mining village and the farming district are 
replaced by the industrial town and the city, the school 
problem is greatly complicated by the crowding of many 
people into a small space and by the great diversity of 
occupations which the people pursue. The larger the 
town the worse the crowding and the greater the variety 
of jobs. Otherwise the problem of education remains 
largely the same. 

The most apparent need of the town child is a place 
to play, and the plainest duty of the town elementary 
school is to provide play space. In thinly settled places 
there is no such need. In towns and cities there is no 
more imperative duty resting on the school than the 
furnishing of playgrounds and gymnasiums for chil- 
dren. The practice of building school houses without 
gymnasiums and without play spaces cannot be too 
strongly condemned. It is robbing children of the 
chance to grow into normal human beings. 

The other side of the town problem — the question of 
occupations — has been settled in Germany, and more re- 
cently in certain American cities, by the ' ' continuation ' ' 
school, which unties the Gordian knot by cutting it. 
Instead of allowing children to stop school at fourteen 
the ^'continuation" system requires partial school at- 
tendance until they are eighteen. 

Under this system, when children reach the end of the 
elementary schools they may either go on with a high 
school course for four years, or else they may take a 
"continuation" course for four years. 

For example, if a boy elects to be a carpenter he spends 
forty hours a week as a carpenter's apprentice. Then 
for fourteen hours a week he goes to a school where he 



56 THE NEW EDUCATION 

is taught mechanical drawing, designing, the testing of 
materials, and any other subjects which bear on carpen- 
tering. The time he spends in school is credited on the 
time sheets of his employer. 

So at the end of four years the boy, at eighteen, has 
been well trained in the practice of carpentering by 
working at his job, and well schooled in its theory by 
taking a ''continuation" course which bore directly on 
his work. Thus wage-earning and education are united 
to produce a well-trained man. 

The school problem of the city suburb is very different 
from that of the mining village, the rural community, 
the industrial town, or the city. The children have 
space, good homes, and abundant opportunity to go 
through high school and even through college. Under 
these conditions the elementary grades can be directly 
preparatory for high school work, since six or even seven 
out of ten children will go to high school. 

In the city suburb there need be little specialization 
in the elementary grades. The high school, with a gen- 
eral course and two or three special courses, can be 
relied upon for all necessary specific training. 

VIII Beginning with Child Needs 

In the industrial town, in the city, and in the city 
suburb the high school is being looked to as the place 
where specialized training must be given. The trade 
school can succeed a little, but its effectiveness will 
always be limited by the narrow technical character of 
its instruction, which makes the ''continuation" school 
generally preferable. The high school is not a sepa- 
rate institution, but an integral part of the school sys- 
tem. In a high school, therefore, the children should 
move naturally from the studies of the elementary grades 



FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDEEN 57 

to more advanced studies, but the purpose of both ele- 
mentary and high schools is the same — the preparation 
of children for living. 

Children have needs which the schools are here to 
supply. Certain of these needs are common to all chil- 
dren, and to that extent all schools must provide simi- 
lar training. Other needs, varying with the size and 
character of the community, call for a like variation in 
the course of stud;^. 4 



CHAPTER IV 

PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN ELEMENTARY 
EDUCATION 

I Tlie Kindergarten 

No single chapter can contain all of the progressive 
notes that are being sounded in American Elementary 
Education ; yet it is possible, after some arbitrary pick- 
ing and choosing, to describe a number of the most 
typical and most successful educational innovationSo At 
the bottom of most up-to-date elementary school sys- 
tems is the kindergarten. Not so often as it might be, 
but still frequently, the child begins school work there. 
The games, the songs, the children's sports of these 
kindergarten years, make a joyous entry-way into the 
grades. In Gary the kindergarten child sees life. The 
flowers, leaves, grasses, lichens, fruits, butterflies, moths, 
and birds are usually brought to the classroom. The 
Gary children go on expeditions to explore nature 's won- 
derland, besides making excursions to squares, parks, 
and to the open country. The kindergartners of Cincin- 
nati plant tulip bulbs in the city parks, and visit farms 
in order to have a chance to meet the farm animals. 
Singing, visiting, playing, shaping, building, the kinder- 
garten child sees life on many sides. Perhaps, finally, 
other cities following the lead of Cincinnati will intro- 
duce the kindergarten spirit and kindergarten activities 
into the lower grades where they will clarify an atmos- 
phere, fetid and dank with concepts which to the six- 
year-old are meaningless abstractions. 

58 



PROGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 59 

II Translating the Three R's 

At best the kindergarten reaches but a few. Even 
in cities which boast of a system of organized kindergar- 
tens, only a small portion of the children attend them. 
On the other hand, since practically all school children 
enter the grades, it is on them that an inquiry into ele- 
mentary education must be focused. 

The time has passed when reading, writing, and arith- 
metic made up the entirety of a satisfactory elementary 
education. Like the kindergarten, the elementary school 
must touch life; like the kindergarten, it must provide 
for child needs. Everywhere schools are turning from 
the old methods of teaching spelling, multiplication, and 
syntax to the new methods of teaching children, — yes, 
and teaching them those things which they need, irre- 
spective of name. Three R's no longer suffice. The 
child requires training from the Alpha to the Omega 
of life. 

Compare, for example, the old method of teaching 
geography with the new. Under the abandoned sys* 
tern, the child began with capes, peninsulas, continents, 
meridians, trade routes, rivers, boundaries and prod- 
ucts. Under the new system, he begins with the town 
in which he lives. Each schoolroom in Newark, for 
example, is provided with a large map of the city. In 
addition to these complete maps, each child is given 
a series of small maps, each of which centers about a 
familiar square, store, or public building. Then, from 
this simple beginning, the child fills in the surrounding 
streets and buildings. Newark geography begins in 
the third grade with a description of the school yard 
and the surroundings of the school lot. After all, what 
more simple geography could be conceived than the 



60 THE NEW EDUCATION 

geography that you already know. Borneo and Beloo- 
chistan are abstractions except to the most traveled, 
but what child has not noted the red bricks and ugly 
iron fences surrounding his own school yard? Charity 
and geography both begin logically at home. 

When in the later Newark grades the children are 
taught about Europe and Australasia, they are taught 
on a background of the geography of yards, alleys, 
squares, streets and playgrounds with which they are 
familiar. Geography thus concretely presented, becomes 
comprehensible to even the dullest mind. 

Ill Playing at Mathematics 

The passing system of elementary mathematics took 
the innocents through addition, subtraction and the 
abatis of multiplication tables, until every child was 
fully convinced that 

Multiplication is vexation, 

Division's twice as bad. 
The rule of three perplexes me. 

And practice drives one mad. 

Today arithmetic begins with life. The teachers at 
Gary organize games in which the children are divided 
into two sides. Some of the children play the game, 
while others keep score. Unconsciously, under the 
stress of the most gripping of impulses — the desire to 
win — these little scorekeepers learn addition. As they 
advance in the work, they take up practical problems — 
measure the room for flooring and measure the school 
pavement for cementing. At school No. 4, in Indianapo- 
lis, one of the teachers wanted a cold-frame and a hot- 
bed for use in connection with her nature work. The 
class in mathematics made the measurements ; the draw- 



PEOGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 61 

ing class provided the plans; the boys in the seventh 
and eighth grades dng the pit and constructed the beds. 

The higher grade mathematics work in Indianapolis 
is extremely concrete. Prices and descriptions of mate- 
rials are supplied, and the children are asked to compute 
given problems involving the buying of meats, groceries, 
and other household articles; the cost of heating and 
lighting the home; the cost of home furnishing; the 
construction of buildings; cost-keeping in various fac- 
tories ; the management of the city hospital ; the taxation 
of Indianapolis ; the estimation and construction of pave- 
ment; and, generally, the mathematical problems in- 
volved in the conduct of public and private business. 

Mathematics is alive when it is joined to the problem 
of life. "Well taught, it becomes a part of the real experi- 
ences of childhood and furnishes a foundation for the 
knowledge of later life. 

IV A Model EngUsh Lesson 

Of all subjects taught in the schools, English is the 
most practical, because it is most used in life. We buy 
with it, sell with it, converse with it, write with it, 
adore with it, and protest with it. English is the open 
sesame of life in English-speaking countries. In some 
classes the English period would be fascinating even 
for adults. 

What experience could be more delightful than a visit 
to a third or fourth grade room in which the children 
were writing original poems, fables and stories ! The 
monotony of routine English work was completely broken 
down; the children were enthusiastic, — enthusiastic to 
such a degree that they had all written poetry. 

Just before HalloAveen the teacher had distributed pic- 
tures of a witch on a broomstick, with a cat at her side, 



62 THE NEW EDUCATION 

riding toward the moon. Each child was called upon 

for an original poem on this picture. One boy of eight 

wrote : — 

There was an old witch 

Who flew up in the sky, 
To visit the moon 

That was shining so high. 

Another child improved somewhat upon the versifica- 
tion — 

The witch's cat was as black as her hat, 

As black as her hat was he. 
He had yellow eyes which looked very wise 

As he sailed high over the trees. 

How many of you mature men and women could have 
done a better piece of work than Dorothy Hall, nine and 
a half years old? 

THE MOONLIGHT PEOPLE 

When the stars are twinkling. 

And the ground with snow is white, 
And we are just awaking 

•For to see the morning light; 
Little moonlight people 

Are dancing here and there 
'er a snow white carpet. 

Dancing everywhere. 

This same class of little people, after learning Riley's 
''Pixie People," were asked to write down what they 
believed were the circumstances under which Riley com- 
posed the poem. Their reasons varied all the way from 
a dream of butterflies, to cornfields. 

Seventh and eighth grade children in this same city 
(Newton, Mass.) write books, the titles of which are 
selected by the children with the approval of the teacher. 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION QS 

''A Boy's Life in New York," ''Fairy Stories," ''A 
Book About Airships," "A Story of Boarding School 
Life, ' ' are a few of the titles. Having chosen his title, 
the child outlines the work and then begins on it, writing 
it week by week, illustrating the text with drawings, 
illuminating and decorating the margins with water 
colors, painting a tasty cover, and at last, as the product 
of a year 's work in English, taking home a book written, 
hand printed, hand illumined, covered and bound by 
the author. Could you recognize in this fascinating 
task the dreaded English composition and spelling of 
your childhood days? 

One eighth grade lad, who had always made a rather 
poor showing in school, decided to write his book on 
birds. As he worked into the subject it gradually got 
hold of him. In the early spring he found himself, at 
half past four, morning after morning, out in the 
squares, the parks and the fields, watching for the birds. 
He became absorbed in writing his book, but at the same 
time the teachers of other subjects found him taking 
additional interest in them. The whole tone of his 
school work improved; and when, in May, he delivered 
an illustrated lecture, before one of the teachers' meet- 
ings, on the birds of Newton, he was triumphant. In 
less than a year he had vitalized his whole being with 
an interest in one study. 

"In his talk to the teachers," said Superintendent 
Spalding, "he showed a deeper knowledge of the subject 
than most of the teachers present possessed." 

Those who remember with a shiver of dread the syn- 
tax, parsing, sentence diagramming, paragraph dissect- 
ing, machine composition construction of the grammar 
grades, should have stepped with me into the class of 
an Indianapolis teacher of seventh grade English. The 



64 THE NEW EDUCATION 

teacher sat in the back of the room. The class bent for- 
ward, attentively listening while a roughly clad, uncouth 
boy, slipshod in attitude, stumbled through the broken 
periods of his ungrammatical sentences. 

''And Esau went out after a venison, '' he was saying, 
"and Jacob's mother cooked up some goat's meat till it 
smelled like a venison. And then Jacob, he took the 
venison — I mean the goat's meat to Isaac, and Isaac 
couldn't tell it wasn't Esau because" — so the story con- 
tinued for two or three minutes. When it was ended, 
the boy stood looking gloomily at the class. 

''Well, class?" queried Miss Howes, "has any one any 
criticism to make ? ' ' 

Instantly, three-quarters of the class was on its feet. 

"Well, Edward." 

Edward, a manly fellow, spoke quietly to the boy who 
had told the story. 

"Paul, you don't talk quite loud enough. Then you 
should raise and lower your voice more." 

Several of the class (having intended to make the same 
criticism) sat down with Edward. The teacher turned. 

"Yes, Mary." 

"Paul, your grammar wasn't very good. You didn't 
make periods." 

One by one, in a spirit of kindly helpfulness, criti- 
cisms were made. When the children had finished, Miss 
Howes said: , 

"Paul, you did very well. This is your first time in 
this class, isn't it?" 

"Yes'm." 

"Yes, Paul, you did very well; but, Paul" — and with 
care and precision she outlined his mistakes, suggesting 
in each case ways of avoiding them in the future. 

Throughout the grades in Indianapolis the children 



PROGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 65 

have some oral English work every day. When they 
reach the seventh and eighth years this oral work takes 
on quite pretentious forms. Beginning with Aesop's 
Fables, the children tell fairy tales, Bible stories, Greek 
legends, Norse legends, animal stories, and any other 
stories that the teacher thinks appropriate. Each child 
may select in the particular group of stories whatever 
topic seems most interesting. 

Each day has its written English work, too. On Mon- 
day, letters are written and criticized ; Tuesday is com- 
position day; on Wednesday each scholar writes a 
description of the day in a Season Journal; Thursday 
is set aside for the revision and correction of compo- 
sitions; and on Friday, the letters for the following 
Monday are written. Wherever possible, the subjects 
for written work are selected with reference to the other 
studies which the child is taking. 

V An Original Fairy Story 

The work is arranged primarily to arouse interest. At 
Halloween, the theme is timely, and one girl, Dorothy 
Morrison, selects as her title, "How the Witch got the 
Black Cat for her Prisoner. ' ' Read this charming fairy 
tale — an original piece of work by a girl of twelve : 

''Years ago, when the witch rode her broomstick, no 
snarling black cat accompanied her on her midnight 
rides. That wicked person was always planning and 
plotting how to get some nice young girl to go with 
her. 

''At this time there lived a beautiful fairy, who was 
condemned to death by a cruel magician, who had no 
reason to do so. This good fairy, Eilene, finally decided 
to take the shape of a bird and to fly through the tiny 
window of her prison to her old friend, Mr. Moon. 



66 THE NEW EDUCATION 

*'She did so, and when she arrived at her friend's 
home she assumed the form of a fairy and entreated him 
to keep her safe from the cruel clutches of the magician. 

* ' He promised to do his best. 

''The next Halloween, the witch, Crono, rode up to 
the moon and on spying Eilene she exclaimed, 'Aha, just 
what I have been looking for — a nice young maiden.' 

"Eilene became frightened at first and clutched the 
moon's hand. Just then Crono grabbed at her, but she 
was too quick for her, for she changed herself into a 
bird and flew out of the reaches of the witch. 

' ' Shaking her fist at the girl she muttered, ' I will get 
you yet' 

"Then the witch returned to her caldron and Eilene 
returned to the moon. Mr. Moon then advised her to 
be careful for Crono wanted her for her prisoner. She 
did not heed this because she thought that she could out- 
wit Crono with all her fairy power, but she was mis- 
taken, for Crono had more power than she. One day, 
while sitting at the moon's knee, listening to the story 
of how he got up in the sky, Eilene 's hands and feet 
were tied, and before Mr. Moon could help her, what 
little power that fat personage possessed was taken from 
him. 

"Crono transformed Eilene into a snarling black cat 
which now always accompanies her on her Halloween 
rides when she tells the grinning Jack-o '-Lanterns of 
how she captured Eilene. 

"Because Mr. Moon loved Eilene so well, Crono gave 
him a picture of the fairy, which he always keeps near 
him, and even to this day, if we look up at the moon, we 
can see the picture of Eilene. So let us remember that, 
although the black cat does appear fierce, she is really 
good at heart." 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 67 

VI The Crow and the Scarecrow 

When corn was sprouting, "Crows and Scarecrows'' 
was announced as a topic, and one Irish lad, giving rein 
to his imagination, wrote : — 

THE CROW AND THE SCARECROW 

' ' Having a story to write concerning a crow, I decided 
to go to the zoological gardens and seek an interview 
with one of the species. Accordingly I went, and after 
passing numerous cages containing all kinds of animals, 
I arrived at the bird cages. Here in one cage all by him- 
self I met Mr. Crow. He was a big bird with coal-black 
feathers that glistened in the sunlight. 

"I made a bow, explained my errand and asked for 
a story. He cocked his head to one side, looked steadily 
for a few seconds and then actually winked at me. ' Well, 
young man,' he said in a throaty voice, 'you have cer- 
tainly come to the right place. But as it is near my 
lunch time I must be brief. 

'' 'In the first place, I was the leader of as wild and 
mischievous a band of crows as you ever heard tell of. 
There was one particular farm in our territory we loved 
to visit. The owner's name was Silas Whimple and he 
was the grouchiest, most miserly man in the county. He 
lived alone and what part of the ground that was tilled, 
he did it himself. As much to tease as to eat, we would 
pay him an occasional flying visit, digging up his newly 
planted seeds, nibbling at the young green shoots, or, 
later on, scratching up his potatoes. All his shouting 
and screaming did not scare us a bit. One day one of 
my companions came winging with the news that Silas 
had a farm hand. I laughed and said, *'If there is 



68 THE NEW EDUCATION 

another man on the farm then Silas Whimple must be 
dead." Off we flew to investigate. Sure enough, out 
in a patch of potatoes was a man. Watching him quite 
a while, I saw he did not move or make a noise as Silas 
would. He just stood still. I came down to take a closer 
look, when who should come to the doorway but Silas 
himself. He was laughing and shouting, ''Now I have 
something to keep you away. The scarecrow shall keep 
you from bothering me any more." He laughed and 
laughed, but I watched my chance and flew behind this 
being and scratched off his cap. Then the story was out. 
It was only a straw man. I went back to my companions 
and explained, and before evening we had picked the 
scarecrow to pieces. Next day I was unfortunate enough 
to put my foot in a wire trap and then they sent me 
up here for life.' 

''At this moment his keeper came up with something 
to eat, so I bade him good-bye and left. ' ' 

English, in these classes, is so alive with interest that 
the children write with ardor and read eagerly the litera- 
ture which, improperly handled, they learn so soon to 
despise. 

The time-honored studies of the old curriculum may 
be charged with interest if they are linked to life. The 
most irksome task has its pleasant aspects. Even the 
three R's may be translated into current thought. 

VII School and Home 

Even more significant for the future is the work which 
is being done in a few cities to train girls for their chief 
work in life — homemaking. The home schools at Indian- 
apolis and Providence are, perhaps, typical. The 
Indianapolis School Board bought a number of wretched 
homes near one school in a crowded district. The boys 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION gg 

in the school renovated the homes, converting one into a 
rug shop, another into a mop factory, and still a third 
into a shoe-shop. In these shops the children of the 
school did their trade work. Another house was made 
into a model home — (model for that quarter)— in which 
the domestic science department was located. Of 
this home the girls took entire charge, living in it by the 
day. There they were taught, by practical experience, 
the art of homemaking. 

The home school of Providence, Rhode Island, under 
the direction of Mrs. Ada Wilson Trowbridge, has 
received nation-wide recognition. Six hundred dollars, 
appropriated by the Board of Education, renovated and 
furnished the flat on Willard Avenue in which the school 
is held. 

The girls who elect to take work in the home school — 
the work is wholly elective — may come on Monday and 
Tuesday, or on Wednesday and Thursday. The hours 
are 4 to 6, or 7 :30 to 9 :30. On Friday, anyone comes 
who cares to. The day pupils are from the grammar 
schools and the evening pupils come from the factories 
and shops. Seventy-five names on the waiting list of 
day classes indicate the popularity of the school. 

' ' We try to keep the school like the homes from which 
these girls come," explained Mrs. Trowbridge, as she 
showed her tastefully arranged apartment. "The girls 
in the Technical High School worked out the color 
schemes, selected the patterns and bought the materials. 
We tried to get things which were good looking and 
durable." 

The three kinds of work, (1) Cooking, (2) House- 
keeping, and (3) Sewing, are carried on in rotation, a 
girl spending one entire afternoon at cooking, the next 
at sewing and a third at housework. Thus each girl 



70 • THE NEW EDUCATION 

does an afternoon's job in each subject. The cooking 
class studies successively ''breakfast," "lunch" and 
"dinner," in each case preparing menus and cooking 
the food. A meal is served nearly every day. The 
service falls to the housekeeping class, which is also 
responsible for cleaning up, tending the furnace, wash- 
ing, ironing and the like. Included in this part of the 
work are a number of thorough discussions of personal 
hygiene and home sanitation. To the sewing class, the 
girls bring their home sewing problems. Certain classes 
darn stockings while a teacher reads to them. Some girls 
make underclothing and dresses. The beginners hem 
table cloths, napkins, towels, dustcloths, etc., for the 
school. The classes are small (ten to fifteen) making 
individual work possible. 

"No, no," protested Mrs. Trowbridge, "we have no 
course of study, or else, if you please, there are as many 
courses as there are girls. Each girl has her problems 
and we aim to meet them." 

The backyard, utilized as a garden, furnishes vege- 
tables which the girls cook and can. These vegetables, 
together with canned fruits, jellies, jams and pickles, 
which the girls put up, give the school such an excellent 
source of revenue that last year it turned over $15 to 
the Superintendent of Schools. 

The crowning work of the school was done in a bare 
upstairs room which the girls papered and painted them- 
selves. "Two of them have since done the same thing 
with rooms at home," declared Mrs. Trowbridge, hap- 
pily. "Isn't that good for a start?" 

The home school stays close to home problems, dealing 
with the facts of life as the girls who come to school 
see them. It would hardly be fair to expect more of 
any school. 



PEOGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 71 

VIII Breaking New Ground 

The regular work of the public school has been sup- 
plemented, of late years, by a number of significant 
innovations, of which the most far-reaching is, perhaps, 
a medical inspection of schools which involves a thorough 
physical examination of all school children by experts. 
By this scheme, the defect of the individual child 
is corrected, and the danger of widespread contagion 
or infection in the schoolroom is reduced to a mini- 
mum. 

Following these physical examinations, the children 
who are clearly sub-normal are placed in special classes 
or special schools, where, under the direction of specially 
fitted teachers, they do any mental work for which they 
are fitted, in the interims of time between manual activi- 
ties. Weaving, woodworking, folding and similar employ- 
ments hold the attention of sub-normal children where 
intellectual work will not. The special school, freed from 
the throttling grip of an iron-clad course of study, 
studies the need of each child, and makes a course of 
study to fit the need. Although the special school has 
been used for incorrigibles, its real value rests in its care 
of the defective child. 

Anaemic children and those who show a tubercular 
tendency are treated in open air schools. In Springfield 
a special school was constructed. In Providence an old 
building was employed. In all cases, however, the win- 
dows are notable by their absence. The school supplies 
caps and army blankets, a milk lunch in the middle of 
the forenoon and the afternoon, and a plain, wholesome 
dinner at noon. A few months of such treatment works 
wonders with most of the children. It seems only fair 
that the sick school child should be treated to fresh air 



72 THE NEW EDUCATION 

and full nutrition, even though the well child is not so 
favored. 

The open air school has borne fruit, however, in the 
establishment of numerous open-window classes. Against 
these classes, there seems to be only one complaint. The 
children are too lively. Fancy! They get a supply of 
oxygen sufficient to stimulate them into life during school 
hours. How tragic this must seem to the teacher who 
is in the habit of calming the troubled spirits of her 
class by a generous administration of closed windows 
and carbon dioxide. 

A few cities are attempting to relieve underfeeding 
by the provision of wholesome school lunches at cost. 
Buffalo leads in the work, with Chicago, Philadelphia 
and a number of other cities trailing behind. When you 
remember that the Chicago School Board reported that 
in the Chicago schools there were ''five thousand chil- 
dren who were habitually hungry," while 'Hen thousand 
others do not have sufficient nourishing food," you will 
perhaps agree that the time has come for some action. 

Among the liveliest educational movements of the day 
is that of providing school children with a legitimate 
occupation and a convenient place to be occupied outside 
of school hours. Chicago, with an unequaled system of 
playgrounds, and Philadelphia, with a department 
devoted to school gardens, are leaders in two fields which 
promise great things for the future welfare of American 
city school children. 

IX The School and the Community 

Not content with doing those needful things involved 
in the education of children of school age, the school is 
reaching far out into the community. Night schools 
came first, as a means of education for those who could 



PEOGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 73 

not attend school during the daytime. Every progress- 
ive city and town has a night school now, and the 
scholars who come after working hours use the same 
expensive equipment that is furnished to the regular 
classes. Machines, cooking apparatus, maps and black- 
board all do double duty. In the foreign quarters, par- 
ticularly, the night schools attract a large following of 
adults, eager to learn the language and ways of the new 
land. Though many a one falls asleep over the tasks, 
who shall say that the spirit is not willing? 

Public lectures are being used more and more as a 
means of public education. There is scarcely an up-to- 
date city that has not some public lectures connected 
with its school or library system, while in a center like 
New York, the Board of Education has established an 
elaborate organization for the delivery of lectures in 
public school buildings throughout the city. The lecture 
topics — widely advertised through the schools and else- 
where — cover every field of thought. 

Perhaps the whole movement of the schools to influ- 
ence the community may be summed up in the phrase, 
' ' A wider use of the school plant. ' ' Why should not the 
schools be open, as they are in Gary, day and evening, 
too ? Why should the mothers and fathers not be organ- 
ized into "Home and School Leagues," meeting in the 
schools as they do on a large scale in Philadelphia ? Wliy 
should not the social sentiment of a community be crys- 
tallized around its schoolhouse, as it has been in Roches- 
ter? Is it better to have the children playing in the 
street in the summer time, or in the school yards and 
playgrounds, as they do in Minneapolis and St. Paul ? 

The billion dollars invested in the school plant must 
be made to yield a return in broader social service with 
each succeeding year. 



74 THE NEW EDUCATION 

X New Keys for Old Locks 

Nor have progressive educators been satisfied to 
change the methods of teaching old subjects. More 
important still, they have introduced new courses which 
aim to open larger fields for child experience. Hygiene, 
nature study, civics, manual training and domestic sci- 
ence have all been called upon to enrich the elementary 
school curriculum. 

The nineteenth century physiology — names of muscles 
and bones, symptoms of diseases and the like — has been 
replaced in the twentieth century schools by a physiology 
which aims to teach that the body is worth caring for 
and developing into something of which every boy and 
girl may be proud. Beginning with nature study and 
elementary science, the hygiene course in Indianapolis 
emphasizes, first, the care of the body and then, in the 
seventh and eighth grades, public health, private and 
public sanitation, etc. From nature and her doings, the 
child is led to see the application of the laws of physi- 
ology and hygiene to the life of the individual and of the 
community. 

Nature study, elementary science, horticulture and 
school gardens have taken their place, on a small scale, 
in all progressive educational systems. There is an edu- 
cation in watching things grow; an education in the 
sequence and significance of the seasons, which brick 
and cement pavements can never afford. 

Scattered attempts are being made to teach children 
the relation between individual and community life. All 
of the seventh and eighth grade children in Indianapolis 
visit the city bureaus — water, light, health, fire and 
police. Trips to factories teach them the relation between 
industry and the individual life, while social concepts 
are developed by newspaper and magazine reading, book 



PEOGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 75 

reading and class discussions of the articles and books 
whicli are read. At election time they discuss politics; 
they take up strikes and labor troubles ; woman suffrage 
is occasionally touched upon; and they are even asked 
to suggest methods of making a given wage cover family 
needs. 

The widespread introduction of domestic science and 
elementary manual training renders any special discus- 
sion of them unnecessary. In some instances, however, 
they are developed to a high degree. In Gary, Indian- 
apolis and Cincinnati, seventh and eighth grade girls 
make their own garments, cook and serve meals to teach- 
ers or to other classes ; while in the advanced grades the 
boys make furniture, sleds, derricks, bridges and tele- 
graph instruments. Chair caning, weaving and clay 
modeling are also widely used in the hand work of both 
boys and girls. 

Fitchburg, Mass., has developed a Practical Arts 
School, paralleling the seventh and eighth grades in the 
grammar school. The school includes a Commercial 
Course, a Practical Arts Course, a Household Arts 
Course and a Literary Course. The regular literature, 
composition, spelling, mathematics, geography, history 
and science of the seventh and eighth grades is supple- 
mented by social dancing, physical training and music 
in all of these courses ; and in addition for the Commer- 
cial Course by typewriting, shorthand, bookkeeping, busi- 
ness arithmetic and designing; for the Practical Arts 
Course, by drawing, designing, printing, making and 
repairing; for the Household Arts Course, by cooking, 
sewing, homekeeping and household arts; and for the 
Literary Course, by half-time in modern language and 
the other half in manual training and household arts. 

At the end of the sixth year (at about twelve years 



76 THE NEW EDUCATION 

of age) children in Fitchburg may elect to take this 
school of Practical Arts instead of the regular grammar 
school course. The results of this election are extraordi- 
nary. The practical course was planned for the children 
who expected to leave school at fourteen, or at the end 
of the eighth grade. Curiously enough, all types of 
children have flocked into it. Sons of doctors, lawyers 
and well-to-do business men; boys and girls preparing 
for college, and children who must stop school in a year 
or two are all clamoring for admission. In spite of the 
fact that pupils are kept in these schools six hours a day 
instead of five, as in the other schools, the attendance at 
the end of two years has outrun the accommodations. 
The children who leave this applied work and enter the. 
high school are apparently not a whit less able to do the 
high school work than those children who have come 
up through the regular grades. 

The new education is broader than the old, because it 
accepts and adopts any study which seems likely to meet 
the needs or wants of any class of children or of any 
individual child. The storehouse of the mind is today 
unlocked with educational keys of which educators in 
past generations scarcely dreamed. 

XI School and Shop 

For the present, at least, there are a great number of 
children who must leave school at fourteen, whether they 
have completed the grammar grades or not. With them, 
the problem of education shapes itself into this question : 
' ' Shall they be well or badly prepared for their work ? ' ' 
The boys enter the shops and mills ; the girls marry and 
make homes. Are they to be efficient workers and house- 
keepers ? The answer rests largely with the schools. 

Ohio has provided, for the solution of the problem, a 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 77 

continuation school law, modeled on the more extensive 
plans of the German Continuation School system. The 
law reads : "In case the board of education of any 
school district establishes part-time day schools for the 
instruction of youths over fourteen years af age who 
are engaged in regular employment, such board of edu- 
cation is authorized to require all youths who have not 
satisfactorily completed the eighth grade of the elemen- 
tary schools to continue their schooling until they are 
sixteen years of age ; provided, however, that such youths, 
if they have been granted Age and Schooling Certificates 
and are regularly employed, shall be required to attend 
school not to exceed eight hours a week between the 
hours of 8:00 A. M. to 5:00 P. M. during the school 
term. ' ' 

Cleveland and Cincinnati, acting under this authority, 
have established continuation schools. In Cleveland they 
are voluntary; in Cincinnati they are compulsory. In 
both cities, children between fourteen and sixteen may 
attend school, during factory time, for four hours each 
week. 

Little enough, you protest. Yes, but it is a beginning. 

The child in such a continuation school may choose 
between academic work, art, drawing and designing, 
shop-work, millinery, dressmaking and domestic science. 
In some cases a continuation course is possible. Thus far 
the system has worked admirably. 

Equally significant are the Massachusetts Vocational 
Schools, which are intended to provide a technical train- 
ing for the boys who wish to pass directly from the 
grammar school into industry. 

Under the Massachusetts law, the state pays half of 
the running expenses of any vocational school which is 
organized with the approval of the State Director of 



78 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Vocational Training. The Springfield school, under the 
supervision of E. E. MacNary, is housed on one floor of 
a factory building. The boys may not come at an earlier 
age than fourteen and Mr. MacNary insists, where pos- 
sible, that they complete the regular seventh grade work 
before coming to him. His school, which includes pat- 
tern making, cabinet work, carpentry and machine shop 
work, is run on the *'job" plan. That is, a boy is; 
assigned to a job such as making a head-stock for a lathe. 
The boy makes his drawings, writes his specifications, 
orders his material and tools, estimates the cost of the 
job, makes the head-stock and then figures up his actual 
costs and compares them with the estimated cost. Not 
until he has gone through all of the operations, may he 
turn to a new piece of work. 

"We tried the half-day and half -day in shop plan," 
Mr. MacNary explains, ' ' but it was not a success. It dis- 
turbed the boys too much. So we hit on the plan of 
letting each boy divide his time as he needed to. When 
he has drawing and estimating to do, he does that and 
when the time for lathe work comes, he turns to that. 
It breaks up any system in your school, but it gives the 
best chance to the individual boy. ' ' 

One day a week all of the boys meet the teachers in 
conference to discuss their work and to make and receive 
general suggestions. 

The boys who come to Mr. MacNary 's school are boys 
who would probably leave the regular school at fourteen. 
Many boys come because they are discouraged with the 
grade work, and of these ' ' grade failures, ' ' many succeed 
admirably in the new school. During the two years of 
this shop -work, the boys get a training which enables 
them to take and hold good positions in the trades. As 
one foreman said, ' ' A boy gets more training in the two 



PEOGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 79 

years of that school than he gets in three years of any 
shop." 

These are but an index of the myriad of attempts 
which cities are making to bring school and shop 
together, to train for usefulness, to start boys in life. 

XII Half a Chance to Study 

There are other ways in which the school may help. 
For example, in the case of homework. On the one hand, 
homework for the sake of homework may be eliminated. 
On the other hand, children may be given half a chance 
to read and study. 

One day in a squalid back street I glanced through 
the window of a corner house. The front of the house 
was a grocery store. The room into which I happened 
to look was a general dwelling room. On one side stood 
the kitchen stove; the floor was littered with children 
and rubbish, and just under the window a child sat, her 
book before her on the supper-covered dining table, doing 
multiplication examples — her homework. The well-to-do 
child, less than ten squares away, who bent over her prob- 
lems in a quiet room, could scarcely appreciate the 
difficulties attached to homework, when the family lives 
in three rooms and does everything possible to reduce the 
bill for kerosene. 

There is just one place in every neighborhood where 
the child can find light, air and quiet — that place is 
the school. Why then should the school not be open 
for the child ? ^ ' Why, indeed, ' ' asked the schoolmen of 
Newark, N. J. Passing from thought to deed, they 
opened schools in the crowded neighborhoods four nights 
a week from 7 to 9. 

Into these evening study classes, in charge of advisory 
teachers, any child might come at all. The city librarian, 



80 THE NEW EDUCATION 

generous in co-operation, lent libraiy books in batches 
of forty, for two months at a time. Evening after even- 
ing, the boys and girls assemble and with text-books or 
library books, do those things in the school which are 
impossible in the home. For what other purpose should 
the school exist? 

XIII Thwarting Satan in the Summer Time 

Another project, equally effective, involves the open- 
ing of schools during the summer time. The farmer 
needed his boy for the harvest, so summer vacations be- 
came the established rule, but the city street needs 
neither the boy nor the girl at any time of the year. 
Idleness and mischief link hands with street children and 
dance away toward delinquency. Then why not have 
school in the summer time? Why not? 

The answer takes the form of vacation schools. In 
most cases the work of the vacation school is designed 
primarily to interest the child. Games, stories, garden- 
ing, manual work of various sorts, excursions and similar 
devices are relied upon to maintain interest. 

A few cities, like Indianapolis, "Worcester and Gary, 
on the other hand, have established vacation schools in 
which children may make up back work, or pursue 
studies in which they are especially interested. 

As a means of bringing below-grade children up to the 
standard of affording an opportunity for the able chil- 
dren to advance more rapidly in school, and, in general, 
as a means of keeping city children usefully occupied 
during the summer months, the vacation school has won 
its place. 

Newark, making an even more radical departure from 
tradition, runs some schools twelve months in the year. 
Edgar G. Pitkin, principal of a school in an immigrant 



PROGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION gl 

district, first put the idea into practice. At the end of 
the regular session in June, he announced to his children 
that school would start again on the following Monday. 
Fearfully he approached the building. The streets about 
the school seemed unusually deserted that Monday morn- 
ing. Suppose no one should be there ! When the gong 
sounded, however, more than seven-tenths of the two 
thousand children belonging in the school were in their 
places. The attendance that summer was ninety-two per 
cent, and the promotion ninety-five per cent. During 
the three summer months there were exactly two cases 
of discipline. 

' ' You see what happened, ' ' Mr. Pitkin explained. ' ' All 
of the bright ambitious children came back and the loaf- 
ers stayed away. From that picked crowd nothing but 
good work could be expected. There was no attendance 
officer on duty, but the children were regular. Order 
was so good that on hot days we put up the sashes 
between rooms, and on the second floor, where four class- 
rooms were thrown into one, four classes worked indus- 
triously under four teachers without the least friction." 

This school has been organized on a year schedule. If 
the children come four terms each year instead of three, 
they will reduce the time between the first and eighth 
grades by one-third, which means a saving to them and 
to the school. Since it is the able children who come, 
the twelve months' school affords them an opportunity 
to go quickly through work on which the slower class- 
mates must hold a more moderate pace. 

XIV Sending the Whole Child to School 
It is a long step from the school of — 

Eeading, and writing and 'rithmetic, 
Taught to the tune of the hickory stick, 



82 THE NEW EDUCATION 

to the school which aims at the education of the whole 
child ; yet that step has been attempted in Gary, Indiana. 
There, perhaps more consistently than anywhere else 
in the United States, the school authorities are providing 
for the whole child in their schools. Many schools have 
manual training and domestic science ; many schools 
have school gardens and playgrounds ; many schools have 
nature work in the parks and squares ; but in no school 
that I have visited did I find a more conscious effort 
to unite mental and physical, hand and head, and voca- 
tion and recreation, in one complete system. 

This result, which to some may sound unbelievably 
like the impossible, is accomplished first, by engaging 
experts to teach such special subjects as botany and 
physical training; second, by abolishing grade promo- 
tions and permitting each child to advance in his sub- 
ject when he is ready to do so; third, by keeping the 
school open morning, afternoon and evening during prac- 
tically the entire year; fourth, by making the work of 
interest to each individual child. Perhaps this matter 
of interest sums up better than any other the spirit of 
the Gary schools. The system aims to make the school 
so attractive that children will prefer to be there rather 
than to be anywhere else. 

How is this done ? Take the case of John Frena, who 
occupies a place of no particular distinction in the fifth 
year of the Gary schools. John's school day (from 
8:30 A. M. to 4:00 P. M.) is divided equally between 
regular work (reading, writing, geography, etc.) and 
special work (play, nature study, manual training 
and the like). A day of John's school life reads like 
this: 

First period — Playground, games, sports and gymnas- 
tics, under the direction of an expert. 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 83 

Second period — Nature study, elementary science and 
physical geography. 

Third and fourth periods — Reading, writing, spelling 
and language. 

Lunch hour. 

Fifth period — Playground (as before). 

Sixth period — Drawing and manual training. 

Seventh and eighth periods — History, political geog- 
raphy and arithmetic. 

During his school day, John has played, used his head 
and his hands, and alternated the work in such a way 
that no one part of it ever became irksome. 

Next week, music and literature will be substituted 
on John's program for drawing; the following week 
manual training will replace one period of play. The 
four special subjects (drawing and manual training, 
music and literature, nature study and science, and plays 
and games) rotate regularly. Each day, however, 
includes four periods of this special work and four 
periods of regular work. 

Such a plan sounds complicated. In reality, it is very 
easy. The gymnasium teacher stays in the gymnasium, 
the drawing teacher in the drawing room. In the regular 
work, there are forty children in each class. For science 
and manual training these classes split in two. At the 
end of each period, or of each two periods, depending 
on the subject, the children pass from one room to 
another. While this system brings them under several 
teachers each day, it enables them to take a subject like 
art with one teacher for twelve years. 

Meanwhile our little friend John has shown himself 
bright in language, but slow in arithmetic. Immediately 
he is advanced in language, and perhaps placed in a 
lower arithmetic class. He may even be transferred to 



84 THE NEW EDUCATION 

another teacher for special arithmetic work. The system 
permits this flexibility because it allows each teacher, an 
expert in her own field, to shape her work to suit her 
pupils. 

Better still, if John cannot master his arithmetic in 
the regular classes, he may attend voluntary classes on 
Saturday, at night, or during the summer months. The 
schools afford him every chance to keep up in every 
subject, and if he cannot make his way in this subject 
or in that, he works in the fields which are open to him, 
doing what he can to make his course a success. 

John, in the schools of Gary, is John Frena, with all 
of John Frena 's limitations and possibilities. The Gary 
school seeks to bridge the limitations, expand the possi- 
bilities, and give John Frena a thousand and one reasons 
for believing that if there is any place in the world where 
he can grow into a complete man, that place is the Gary 

school. 

XV Smashing the School Machine 

One of the oft-repeated complaints against the old edu- 
cation arose from the iron-clad system of promotion 
which once in each year, with automatic precision, sepa- 
rated the sheep from the goats, saying to the sheep, ''go 
higher,'' and to the goats, "repeat the grade." 

For the sheep, the system worked fairly well, at least 
that once ; but for the goats, it was a tragedy. The 
child who had failed in one out of six branches, side by 
side with the child failing in six out of six, repeated 
the year. 

The new education affords several remedies for this 
situation. Of these the most generally known is promo- 
tion twice yearly. While this affords considerable relief, 
it is greatly improved upon in Springfield, Mass., by the 
division of each grade into three divisions — advanced. 



PEOGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 85 

normal and backward. These divisions the teacher 
handles separately so that when promotion time comes 
the children who have shown special aptitude are pre- 
pared to go into the next grade. Meantime the children 
have been constantly changing from one division in the 
class to another. 

Perhaps the most generally practicable plan for reliev- 
ing the mechanical features of promotion is found in 
Indianapolis, and even more intensely in Gary, where 
children are promoted by subjects rather than by grades. 
In Indianapolis, the child entering the sixth grade, takes 
all English with one teacher from that time until the 
end of the eighth grade. If the child is strong in English, 
he advances rapidly. If he is weak in English, the 
teacher gives him special attention. Learning each 
pupil's capabilities in her particular branch, the teacher 
is able to give the individual child, over a series of years, 
the help which his special case requires. 

In Gary the departmental idea is carried through the 
entire school sj^stem. In the Emerson School, for 
instance, children may take eighth grade work in Eng- 
lish and high school work in nature study or history. 
The departmental work is strengthened in Gary, in In- 
dianapolis, and in a number of other cities, by afternoon 
work, Saturday classes and vacation schools. Here, a 
child interested in any phase of the school work or desir- 
ing to make up work in which he is deficient, may spend 
his spare time to his heart 's content. 

An even greater individuation of children exists in 
Fitchburg and Newton, Mass., and in Providence, R. I. 
Children from the country and foreign children who 
have difficulty with their English, together with any 
other children who do not fit into any grade, are placed 
in an ungraded class. A typical ungraded class of fifty 



86 THE NEW EDUCATION 

pupils contained Germans, Russians, Greeks, French, 
Italians and Polish children, who were unable to speak 
English on entering the school. The ages of these chil- 
dred varied from eight to fifteen. As soon as the 
ungraded children appear to be fitted for any special 
grade, they are transferred. 

This ungraded work is supplemented by *' floating 
teachers, ' ' who are located in each school for the purpose 
of dealing with special cases. The case of any child who, 
for this reason or that, cannot keep up with the work in 
a particular subject, is handed over to these teachers. 
Thus individual attention is secured in individual cases. 

XVI All Hands Around for An Elementary School 

These progressive educational steps are not isolated 
instances of success in new lines, nor are they incom- 
patible with good work. They may be welded into a 
unified system, aglow with the real interests of real life. 
It is possible to correlate the old standard courses and 
the new fields in such a way that the child will gain in 
interest and in life experience. 

Nowhere is this possibility better illustrated than in 
the elementary schools of Indianapolis. Take as an 
example School No. 52, which is located in an average 
district. The children, neither very rich nor very poor, 
possess the advantages and disadvantages of that great 
mass known as ' ' common people. ' ' 

The children in grades one to three, inclusive, in addi- 
tion to studying the three R's, spend thirty minutes each 
day learning to measure, fold, cut and weave paper. In 
grades four and five, an hour and a half per week is 
devoted to simple weaving, knife-work, raffia work, sew- 
ing and basketry. Grade six has four and a half hours 
of similar work each week, while in grades seven and 



PEOGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 87 

eight, the pupils are occupied for one-third of their 
entire school time in art work, book-binding, pottery 
work, weaving (blankets and rugs), chair caning, cook- 
ing, sewing and printing. 

' ^ But how is it possible ? ' ' queries the defender of the 
old system. ' ' How can the necessary subjects be taught 
in two-thirds of the time now devoted to them? Are 
we not already crowded to death ? ' ' 

Yes, crowded with dead work, the proof of which lies 
in the fact that the children who devote a third of the 
time to apply their knowledge get as good or better 
marks in the academic work than the three-thirds chil- 
dren. That, however, is not the really important point. 
This course of study is valuable because it gives a 
rounded, unified training. 

This is how the course is organized. The school life 
is a unit, into which each department fits and in which 
it works. The spelling lesson is covered in the class- 
room and set in type in the print shop. The grammar 
lesson consists in revising compositions with regulation 
proofreaders' corrections. The art department designs 
clothes which are made in the sewing classes. The draw- 
ing room furnishes plans for the wood and iron work and 
designs for basketry and pottery. In the English classes, 
the problems of caning and weaving are written and 
discussed. The mathematical problems are problems of 
the school. Children in the sixth year keep careful 
accounts of personal receipts and expenditures — accounts 
which are balanced semi-weekly. The boy in one wood- 
working class makes out an order for materials. A boy 
in another class makes the necessary computations and 
fills the order. All costs of dressmaking and cooking 
materials are carefully kept and dealt with as arithmetic 
problems. For the older boys, shop-cards are kept, show- 



88 THE NEW EDUCATION 

ing the amount and price of materials used and the time 
devoted to a given operation. These again form a basis 
for mathematical work. The whole is knit together in 
a civics class, which deals with the industrial, political 
and social questions, in their relations to the child and 
to the community. 

Best of all, the things which the children talk and 
figure about, plan and make, have value. The seventh 
and eighth year girls make clothes which they are proud 
to show and wear; they cook lunch for which some of 
the teachers pay a cost price. The baskets are taken 
home. Eighty chairs are caned by the children each 
year. The bindery binds magazines, songs and special 
literature. The boys make sleds and carts, hall stands, 
umbrella racks, center tables and stools. They make 
cupboards and shelves for the school, quilting-frames on 
which the girls do patchwork. Rags are woven into rag 
carpets and sold. The print shop prints all of the sta- 
tionery for the school. Each can of preserves, in the 
ample stock put up by the girls, is labeled thus : 

''Preserved Peaches" 

with labels printed by the boys. 

June, 1912, witnessed a triumph for the entire school. 
The children in the upper class had taken up the study 
of book-making. They even went to a bindery and saw 
a book bound and lettered. Then, to show what they 
had learned, they composed, set up and printed — 

A Book 
About Books 

by 
June 8 A Class. 



PROGRESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION §9 

This book of twenty-eight pages, tastefully covered 
and decorated, contained three half-tone cuts which the 
children paid for by means of entertainments; an essay 
by Hazel Almas on "The History of Books," one by 
Adele Wise on ''The Printing of a Book," and one by 
Ruth Kingelman on ''The Art of Bookbinding"; the 
program of the commencement exercises, and a collec- 
tion of poems and wise sayings. 

The children went further and invited Mr. Charles 
Bookwalter, the owner of the bookbindery where they 
had learned their lesson, to come and talk to them on 
Commencement Day. He came, made a splendid address 
and went away filled with wonder before these achieve- 
ments of fourteen-year-old grammar school children. 

Each grade has a special subject of study. This year 
the boys in the Eighth A are studying saws; the boys 
in Eighth B, lumbering ; the girls in Eighth A are inves- 
tigating wool and silk; while in Eighth B the girls are 
studying cotton and flax. This "study" means much. 
Not only do the children discuss the topics, write about 
them, read books on them, and do problems concerning 
them, but they visit the factories and study the processes 
Orom beginning to end. 

When the problem of pins came up, the teacher desired 
several copies of a description of pin-making, so she 
asked the class to write out a letter to the manufacturers. 
The class, left to select, decided to send this letter : 

School No. 52, 
Indianapolis, Ind., Oct. 11, 1912. 
American Pin Company, 

Waterbuiy, Conn. 

Dear Sirs: On seeing the pamphlet on pins you have been kind 
enough to send us, I have decided to write and ask you if you 
would kindly send us about twenty of your pamphlets on the 
making of pins. 



90 THE NEW EDUCATION 

We are in the eighth grade, and expect to go out into the world 
in January, and your process of making pins will be spread abroad 
to the whole world. 

We are very anxious to know more about the making of pins, 
and we are very much interested in your process. 

^ Yours sincerely, 

EuTH Harrison. 

Need I say that the American Pin Company sent 
immediately twenty duplicates of the desired pamphlet ? 

The work in this school where thought and activity 
go hand in hand, is done by the regular grade teachers — 
done, and done well. They are as enthusiastic as the 
pupils. Four years' trial has convinced them. On the 
day that I visited the school, I walked into a classroom 
where twenty girls were busy sewing. The order was 
perfect. Every one was busy. The teacher was nowhere 
in evidence. 

''That teacher," explained the principal to me later, 
"is off at a teachers' meeting. She left these girls on 
their honor to work. You see the result. ' ' 

I saw and marveled. Yet why marvel? Was not 
this a typical product of the system which knits thought 
and activity into such a harmonious, fascinating whole 
as the most fortunate adults find in later life ? Out of 
such a school may we not well develop harmony and 
keen life? Never yet have men gathered grapes from 
thistles, but often and often have they plucked from 
fig trees the figs which they craved and sought. 

XVII From a Blazed Trail to a Paved Highway- 
Pages might be filled with descriptions of similar suc- 
cesses, yet I think that my point is already sufficiently 
established. How can we disagree regarding so plain 
a matter? The path of educational progress has led 



PEOGEESSIVE NOTES IN EDUCATION 91 

away from the three R's along a trail, blazed at first 
by a few men and women who dreamed and stepped for- 
ward hesitatingly. Often they retraced their steps, dis- 
couraged, and gave over the little they had gained. By 
degrees, however, the trail was blazed. The way became 
clearer. After all it was possible to connect education 
with life. 

SloAvly the light of this truth dawned upon men's 
minds. Gradually the way opened before them. One 
by one they trod the path, bridging the worst defiles, 
straightening the road, cutting out the thickets and fill- 
ing in the morasses, until at last, behold the way, 
explored by hesitating, derided pioneers, no longer a 
trail, but a broad highway. Others have gone — their 
name is legion — and have succeeded. The three R's are 
but the beginning of an adequate elementary curriculum. 
You, in your own city, with your own teachers, can 
vitalize your elementary schools. You can teach the 
children to use their heads and hands together, and thus 
show them the way to a deeper interest in your schools, 
and a larger outlook on their work in life. 



CHAPTER V 

KEEPING THE HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH 

LIFE 

I The Responsibility of the High School 

^' Every pupil of high school maturity should be in 
high school atmosphere whether he has completed the 
work of the grammar grades or not," insists Dr. F. E. 
Spaulding. '' Perhaps the high school course of study 
is not adapted to the needs of such children. Well, so 
much the worse for the course of study. The sooner the 
high school suits its work to the needs of fourteen and 
fifteen-year-old boys and girls, the sooner it will be filling 
its true place in the community. ' ' Such opinions, voiced 
in this ease by a man whose national reputation is 
founded on his splendid work as superintendent of the 
school system of Newton Mass., bespeak the attitude of 
the most progressive American high schools. 

The high school is not a training ground for colleges, 
nor is it a repository of classical lore. As an advanced 
school it differs no more from the elementary school 
than the six cylinder automobile differs from the four 
cylinder car. Though its work is more complex, like the 
elementary school it exists for the sole purpose of help- 
ing children to live wholesome, efficient lives. 

II An Experiment in Futures 

Children who get stranded in the seventh or eighth 
grades may have failed in one subject or in several. 
Over age and out of place, they lose interest, become dis- 

92 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 93 

couraged and at fourteen drop out of school to work 
or to idle. In Newton, as in every other town, there 
were a number of just such children whom Mr. Spauld- 
ing decided to get into the high school. 

' ' There they will be among children of their own age, ' ' 
he explained. ''They may take a new line of work and 
acquire a real interest." 

"But they will fail in their high school work as 
they have failed in their grade work," protested the 
doubters. 

Mr. Spaulding, smiling his quiet, genial smile, tried 
his experiment all the same. From the seventh and 
eighth grades of the Newton schools he picked the boys 
and girls who were fifteen or more at their next birth- 
days. These pupils, seventy in all — forty girls and 
thirty boys — were transferred, without examination, into 
the high school. 

"These youngsters were going to drop out of school 
for good in one year, or two at the outside," explained 
Mr. Spaulding, "so I made up my mind that during 
that year at least they should have some high school 
training. They went to the regular high school teachers 
for their hand- work; but for their studies, I put them 
in charge of three capable grade teachers, who were 
responsible for seeing that each child was making good. 
I put it to the grade teachers this way : ' Here aj^e a lot 
of children who have got the failure habit by failing 
all through their school course. Unless we want to send 
them out of our school to make similar failures in life, 
we must teach them to succeed. Take each child on his 
0"svn merits, give him work that he can do and let him 
learn success. ' 

"We gave these boys and girls twenty hours a week 
of technical work (drawing, designing, shop-work, cook- 



94 THE NEW EDUCATION 

ing and sewing) and ten hours a week of academic work 
(English, mathematics, civics and hygiene). Shop costs, 
buying of materials and simple acounting covered their 
mathematics. Those were the things which would prob- 
ably be most needful in life. The boys got deeply inter- 
ested in civics, and we let them go as far and as fast as 
they pleased. With the girls we discussed hygiene, dress- 
ing and a lot of other things in which they were inter- 
ested. 

"When those children entered the school they were 
boisterous and rough. The girls dressed gaudily, revel- 
ing in cheap finery. By Christmas, to all appearances, 
their classes differed in no way from the other high 
school classes. They all brushed their hair. The boys 
were neater and the girls were becomingly dressed. 

Most of the seventy children stayed through the year. 
Twenty-seven of the forty girls and seventeen of the 
thirty boys entered the regular high school course the 
next fall. They were thus put into competition with 
their former seventh and eighth grade comrades, 
although they had had only two-fifths as much academic 
w^ork as the regular eighth grade pupils. There was the 
test. 

Could these derelicts, after one year of special care, 
take their places in the regular freshman high school 
work ? After the end of the first quarter, a study made 
of the 800 children in the high school showed that on 
the average there were fifty-four hundredths of one fail- 
ure for each scholar. Among the twenty-seven girls from 
the special classes, however, there was but seventeen-hun- 
dredths of a failure for each girl, or one-third as many 
failures as in the whole school. The boys made an even 
better showing. Of the entire seventeen, only one boy 
failed, and in only one subject. 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 95 

III The Success Habit 

''We had given them something they liked and conld 
do, ' ' Mr. Spaulding concluded. ' ' They succeeded a few 
times, got the success habit, learned to like school, went 
into the regular high school course and succeeded there." 

As an illustration of the way in which the new plan 
works, take the case of James Rawley. James was in 
a serious predicament. Time after time the court had 
overlooked his truancy and misdoings, but James had 
taken the pitcher once too often to the well, and the open 
doors of the State Reform School stared him grimly in 
the face. 

' ' It will be best for him in the long run, ' ' commented 
the judge. "Each month of this wild life makes him 
a little less fit to keep his place in the community. He 
has had his last chance. ' ' 

Yet there was one ray of hope, for James lived in and 
out of Boston, a city located near the Newton Technical 
High School. This fact led James's custodians to pro- 
pose to the judge that he give James one more trial, this 
time in the Newton Technical High School. The judge, 
also of the initiated, agreed to the suggestion, and James, 
a dismal eighth grade failure, entered the Newton 
Technical High School in one of the special transfer 
classes. 

Just a word about James. He began life badly. His 
mother died when he was young ; and his father, a rather 
indifferent man, boarded the boy out during his early 
years with an aunt, who first spoiled him through indul- 
gence, and then, inconsistently enough, hated him because 
he was spoiled. Growing up in this uncongenial atmos- 
phere, James became entirely uncontrollable. He was 
disagreeable in the extreme, wild and unmanageable. 



96 THE NEW EDUCATION 

The people with whom James was boarding grew tired 
of his continued truancy and he was placed on a farm 
near Boston. There, too, he was discontented, dissatis- 
fied and disobedient. Time after time he ran away to 
Boston. He went on from bad to worse, falling in with 
vagrants, learning their talk and their ways, acquiring 
a love for wandering and a distaste for regularity and 
direction. Taken into custody by the Juvenile Court, 
and placed on probation with a family outside of Boston, 
James again ran away to mingle with a crowd of his old 
associates in Boston. It was at this point that the court 
decided to send him to the Reform School. It was like- 
wise at this time that some friendly people took him in 
charge, found him a home in Newton, and started his 
life anew in the Newton Technical High School, which 
James entered with a special transfer class. Promoted ' 
to the regular freshman class on trial, James has renewed 
his interest in education and bids fair to make his way 
through the high school. 

James is doing well in the Newton Technical High 
School. Though he does not like all of the regular high 
school work, he has a full course, and is working at it 
persistently. Heretofore school has never appealed to 
him — in fact, he hated it cordially — ^but the school at 
Newton offered him such a variety of subjects that he 
was able to find some which were attractive. Since then 
he has been working on those subjects. 

There are many cities in which every school door 
would have been closed to James, because he did not fit 
into the school system, but the superintendent of the 
Newton schools believes in making the school fit the 
needs of the boy. A fantastic theory ? Well, perhaps a 
trifle, from one viewpoint; nevertheless, it is the soul 
of education. 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 97 

IV The Help-Out Spirit 

As a result of this special promotion policy, there are 
practically no over-age pupils in the grammar schools 
of Newton. Instead of square pegs in round holes, the 
Newton High School can boast of sixty or seventy chil- 
dren who come, each year, in search of a new opening 
for which they are technically not ready, but into which 
they may grow. After coming to the high school, two- 
thirds of them find an incentive sufficient to lead them 
to continue with an education of which they had already 
wearied. 

The Newton High School, recognizing its obligation 
to serve the people, strains every nerve to enable boys 
and girls to take high school work. The printing teacher 
pointed to his class of twenty. 

''Only three of them do not work on Saturdays and 
after school. They couldn't come here if they didn't 
work. Hiney, there, was in a bakeshop all day at three 
and a half a week. We got him a job afternoons and 
Saturdays that pays him three dollars. That tall fellow 
will send himself through high school on the six dollars 
a week that he gets from a drug store where he works 
outside of school hours. ' ' 

"We aim," added Mr. Spaulding, ''to do everything 
in our power to make it possible for the boys to come 
here. If their parents cannot afford to send them, we 
find work for them to do outside of school hours. ' ' 

That is virile work, is it not ? And the result ? Dur- 
ing the past eight years the number of pupils in the 
Newton schools who are over fourteen has increased 
three times as fast as the number of pupils who are 
under fourteen. The school authorities have searched 
the highways and byways of the educational world until 



98 - THE NEW EDUCATION 

one-quarter of the school children of Newton are in the 
high schools. 

V Joining Hands with the Elementary Schools 

The same result which is attained informally at New- 
ton is accomplished more formally by the organization 
of the junior high schools which have sprung up in Berk- 
eley and Los Angeles, California ; Evansville, Indiana ; 
Dayton, Ohio, and a number of other progressive edu- 
cational centers. The child's school life under this plan 
is divided into three parts — the elementary grades 
(years one to six), the junior high school (years seven 
to nine) and the high school proper (years ten to 
twelve). The break, if break there must be, between 
the elementary and the high school, thus comes at age 
twelve and at age fifteen, instead of, as formerly, com- 
ing at age fourteen, when the temptation to leave school 
is so strong. Then, too, the sharp transition from work 
by grades to work by departments is made easier because 
the junior high school combines the two, leading the 
pupil gradually over from the grade method to the 
department method. 

Though the junior high school has so great a popu- 
larity, its work is eclipsed by the still more revolutionary 
program of those educators who advocate the complete 
abolition of any line between the elementary and the high 
school, and the establishment of a public school of twelve 
school years. This plan, coupled with promotion by sub- 
jects rather than by grades, replaces the machine method 
of promotion and the gap between elementary and high 
schools by an easy, natural progression adaptable to 
the needs of any student, from the end of the kinder- 
garten to the beginning of the university. 

Superintendent Wirt of Gary, Indiana, has estab- 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 99 

listed such a twelve-year course in the Emerson School. 
The grades, numbered from one to twelve, are so 
arranged that a girl may take half of her subjects in 
school year eight (last grammar grade) and the other 
half in school year nine (first high school grade). In 
order to make the harmony more complete, Mr. "Wirt 
places the elementary rooms, containing the second grade 
pupils, next door to the rooms which shelter high school 
seniors. On this side of the hall is a kindergarten; 
directly across from it is a class in high school geometry. 

The same plan, on a larger scale, has been adopted 
by I. B. Gilbert, principal of the Union High School, 
Grand Rapids, Michigan, which houses twelve hundred 
students. 

''We have obliterated the sharp line of distinction 
between the grades," declared Mr. Gilbert. ''The 
school, which is a new one, has a very complete equip- 
ment — physical, chemical, and biological laboratories, 
two cooking rooms, dressmaking and millinery rooms, an 
art department, a woodworking shop, a forge room and 
a machine shop ; the print shop, though not yet installed, 
is to-be put in this year. By bringing children of all 
grades to the school, we place at the disposal of grade 
pupils apparatus ordinarily reserved for high school 
pupils only. At the same time, our equipment is in con- 
stant use and the cost of establishing a separate indus- 
trial department or school for the grades is eliminated. 

"These are merely the surface advantages, however. 
The real gain to the students is in other and most sig- 
nificant directions. First, the abolishing of rigid grading 
allows each child to follow his own bent. At the begin- 
ning of the adolescent period, when the old interests 
begin to lag, some new ideas must be furnished if the 
child is to be kept in school. We provide that new stimu- 



100 THE NEW EDUCATION 

lus by beginning departmental work with the seventh 
year (at twelve or thirteen). Then, if the child shows 
any particular preference for any line of work, he may 
pursue it. From the seventh grade up, promotion is 
by subjects entirely, and not by grades. If a student 
elects art, she may follow up her art work for the next 
six years; similarly, a boy may follow shop-work, or a 
girl domestic science or millinery. In order to fit the 
school more quickly to the pupils' need, we make a divi- 
sion at the beginning of the eighth grade of those pupils 
desiring to take academic work and those desiring 
to take industrial work in the high school. The lat- 
ter group does extra sewing or shop-work twice each 
week. 

"Again, we take all. over-age and over-size pupils from 
the schools in this section of the city, and by placing 
them in ungraded classes, permit them to take the work 
which they can do. Here is a boy who cannot master 
grammar. That is no reason why he should not design 
jewelry, so we give him fourth year language, and take 
him into the tenth year class in jewelry design. Yes, and 
he makes good, doing excellent craft work and gradually 
pulling up in his language. By this means we make 
our twelve grade school fit the needs of any and every 
pupil who may come to it. 

''We have a natural educational progress for twelve 
years," concluded Mr. Gilbert. ''There is no break 
anywhere. Instead of making it hard to step from grade 
eight to grade nine, we interrelate them so intimately 
that the student scarcely feels the change from one to 
the other. The result? Last June there were 152 
pupils in our eighth grade. Of that number 118, or more 
than three-quarters of them reported in the ninth grade 
this fall. We have cancelled the invitation to quit school 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE IQl 

at the end of the eighth grade and our children stay 
with us." 

VI The Abolition of "Mass Play" 

Thus the dark narrow passage-way from the elemen- 
tary to the higher schools is being widened, lighted, 
paved and sign-posted. In some school systems it has 
disappeared altogether, leaving the promotion from the 
eighth year to the first year high school as easy as the 
step from the seventh to the eighth grade. After the 
children have reached the high school, however, the task 
is only begun. First they must be individualized, sec- 
ond socialized, and third taught. 

''The trouble with the girls," complained Wm. Mc- 
Andrew, in discussing his four thousand "Washington 
Irvingites, *'is that they have always been taught mass 
play. Take singing, for instance. A class started off 
will sing beautifully all together, but get one girl on 
her feet and she is afraid to utter a note. The grade 
instruction has taught them group acting and group 
thinking. I step into a class of Freshmen with a ' Good 
morning, girls'. 

'' 'Good morning,' they chorus. 

*' 'Are you glad to see me, girls?' 

*' 'Yes sir,' again in chorus. 

*' 'Do you wished I was hanged?' 

*' 'Yes sir,' generally, — 

" 'Oh, no sir,' cries one girl who has begun to cere- 
brate. The idea catches all over the class, and again 
the chorus comes, — 

" 'Oh, no sir, no sir.' 

"So it goes. The bright girl takes her cue from the 
teacher and the class takes the cue from the bright 
girl. They must be taught to think and do for 
themselves. ' ' 



102 - THE NEW EDUCATION 

Everyone interested in school children should visit 
the Washington Irving School (New York) and watch 
the truly wonderful McAndrew system of individual- 
ization. In the office, you are cordially greeted. You 
wish to see the school ? By all means ! But no teacher 
is detailed to serve you. Instead, a messenger goes in 
search of the Reception Committee. Two of the school 
girls, after a formal introduction, start your tour of 
inspection, if you are fortunate enough to be there at 
nine, with a visit to one of the assembly rooms, where, 
in groups of three or four hundred, the girls enjoy three- 
quarters of an hour each morning. The word "enjoy" 
is used advisedly, for, unlike the ordinary assembly, 
this one is conducted entirely by the girls. 

Each morning a different chairman and secretary is 
selected, so that in the course of the year every girl has 
had her turn. The chairman, after calling the meeting 
to order and appointing two critics for the day, reads 
her own scripture selection, and then calls upon some girl 
to lead the salute to the flag. The minutes of the pre- 
vious day's meeting are then read, discussed and 
accepted. After fifteen minutes of singing — singing 
of everything from "Faust" to "Rags" — the chair- 
man calls on the two critics for their criticism of the 
conduct of that day's meeting. Some special event is 
then in order. On one Monday in December Miss Sage, 
head of the Biology Department, described the Biological 
Laboratory in the new school building. After she had 
finished, the chairman rose. 

"Will anyone volunteer to tell in a few words the 
principal points which Miss Sage made ? ' ' 

Three girls were promptly on their feet, giving, in 
clear, collected language, an analysis of the talk. 

After you, as a guest, have been conducted to the plat- 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 103 

form, introduced to the chairman, and given a seat of 
honor, the chairman turns to the assembly, with the 
announcement, — 

"Girls, I wish to introduce to you our guest of this 
morning. ' ' 

Instantly the whole assembly rises, singing blithely, 
* ' Good morning, honored guest, we the girls of the Wash- 
ington Irving High School are glad to welcome you/' 

The proceedings having come to an end, the chair- 
man declares the meeting adjourned and you look about, 
realizing with a start that the girls — freshmen, sopho- 
mores, juniors, and seniors — have spent three-quarters 
of an hour in charge of themselves, and have done it 
with interest, and with striking efficiency. Continuing 
your journey, you find the process of individualization 
everywhere present. Here a girl is in front of a class, 
directing the calisthenics which precede each class hour. 
There a girl is standing at the front of the room, leading 
singing or quizzing in geometry. 

''Yes, it was a wrench," Mr. McAndrews admits. 
"You see, the teachers hated to give up. They had been 
despots during all of- their teaching lives, and the idea 
of handing the discipline and a lot of the responsibility 
of the school over to the girls hurt them dreadfully, but 
they have tried it and found that it works." 

VII Experimental Democracy 

The high school pupil, after discovering himself, must 
next determine his relation to the community. It is one 
thing to break down what Mr. McAndrew calls the W. I. 
(Wooden Indian) attitude. It is quite another to relate 
pupils to the community in which they live. Yet this, 
too, can be done. The school is a society — incomplete 
in certain respects, yet in its broad outline similar to 



104 THE NEW EDUCATION 

the city and the state. The social work of the school 
consists in showing the citizens of the school-community 
how to enjoy the privileges and act up to the responsi- 
bilities of citizenship. The Emerson School at Gary and 
the Union High School at Grand Rapids, organized into 
complete schools from the first grade to the end of the 
high school, are miniature working models of the com- 
posite world in which all of the children will live. 

Particularly effective work has been done on the 
social side of high school organization at the William 
Penn High School (Philadelphia), where Mr. Lewis has 
turned the conduct of student affairs over to a Student 
Government Association, directed by a Board of Gov- 
ernors of eighteen, on which the faculty, represented by 
five members, holds an advisory position only. The Asso- 
ciation gives some annual event, like a May day fete, in 
which all of the girls take part. It assumes charge of 
the corridors, elevators, and lunch rooms; grants char- 
ters to clubs and student societies, and assumes a gen- 
eral direction of student affairs. 

''It really doesn't take much time," Irene Litchman, 
the first term (1912-13) President, explained. ''We like 
it and we're proud to do it. We used to have teachers 
everywhere taking charge of things. Now we do it all 
ourselves." True enough, Madame President, and it is 
well done, as any casual observer may see. Similar testi- 
mony is to be had from the sick girls who have received 
letters and flowers, from the children whose Christmas 
has been brightened by Association-dressed dolls, and 
from the girls whose misunderstandings with mem- 
bers of the faculty have been settled by the Student 
Association. 

Each class in the Washington Irving High School 
(New York) gives one reception a term to one of the 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 105 

other classes. In addition, an annual reception and play 
are given by the entire school. The plays for these occa- 
sions are written, costumed and staged by the students. 
Last year the reception was given to Mrs. Dix, wife 
of the Governor of New York, and the play ''Rip Van 
Winkle" was acted by eighteen hundred girls. Such 
organizations and activities lead high school students to 
feel social relationships, and to assume responsibilities as 
members of the social group. 

VIII Breaching the Chinese Wall of High School Classicism 

A high school education is included, by progressive 
communities, in the birth-right of every child. Since 
only a small part of these children are preparing for 
college, the school must offer more than the traditional 
high school course. The principal of a great Western 
high school which housed nearly two thousand children, 
pointed to one room in which a tiny class bent over their 
books. ''That is probably the last class in Greek that 
we shall ever have in the school," he said. "They are 
sophomores. Only two freshmen elected Greek this fall, 
and we decided not to form the class. ' ' Time was when 
Greek was one of the pillars of the high school course 
of study. In this particular school, splendidly equipped 
laboratories, sewing rooms, and shops have claimed the 
children. The classics are still popular with a small 
minority, but the vast majority come to learn some 
lesson which will direct their steps along the pathway 
of life. 

Everjnvhere the technical high school courses are gain- 
ing by leaps and bounds. The William Penn High 
School (Philadelphia), established in 1909, is to-day 
enrolling four-fifths of the girls who enter Philadelphia 
high schools. In some cities, technical work and classical 



106 THE NEW EDUCATION 

work are done in the same building ; in other cities, they 
are sheltered separately, but everywhere the high school 
is opening its doors to that great group of school chil- 
dren who, at seventeen or eighteen, must and will enter 
the arena of life. 

The technical high school has not gained its prestige 
easily, however. The bitter contests between the old and 
the new are well portrayed by one dramatic episode 
from the history of the Los Angeles High School. Mr. 
John H. Francis, now superintendent of the schools of 
Los Angeles, was head of the Commercial Department 
in the Los Angeles High School. Despite opposition and 
ridicule the department grew until it finally emerged as 
a full-fledged technical high school, claiming a building 
of its own, — a building which Mr. Francis insisted 
should contain accommodations for two thousand stu- 
dents. The authorities protested, — ''Tvfo thousand 
technical students ? Why, Los Angeles is not a metropo- 
lis." Mr. Francis gained his point, however, and the 
building was erected to accommodate two thousand chil- 
dren. When the time for opening arrived it was dis- 
covered, to the astonishment of the doubters, that more 
students wanted to come into the school than the school 
would hold. When Mr. Francis announced that students 
up to two thousand would be admitted in order of appli- 
cation, excitement in school circles ran high, and on the 
day before Registration Day a line began to form which 
grew in length as the day wore on, until by nightfall it 
extended for squares from the school. All that night 
the boys and girls camped in their places, waiting for the 
morning which would bring an opportunity to attend 
the technical high school. 

Though less dramatic in form, the rush toward techni- 
cal high school courses is equally significant. It is not 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 107 

that the old high school has lost, but that the new high 
school is drawing in thousands of boys and girls who, 
from lack of interest in classical education, would have 
gone directly from the grammar school into the mill or 
the office. 

IX An Up-to-Date High School 

The modem high school is housed in a building which 
contains, in addition to the regular class rooms, gym- 
nasiums, a swimming tank, physics, and chemical labora- 
tories; cooking, sewing, and millinery rooms; wood- 
working, forge, and machine shops; drawing rooms; a 
music room; a room devoted to arts and crafts; and an 
assembly room. This arrangement of rooms presupposes 
Mr. Gilbert's plan of making the high school, like the 
community, an aggregation of every sort of people, doing 
every sort of work. 

Physical training in the high school has not yet come 
into its own, though it is on the road to recognition. All 
of the newer high schools have gymnasiums, but the chil- 
dren do not use them for more than thirty, forty, or fifty 
minutes a week. Sometimes the work is optional. The 
West Technical of Cleveland, with its outdoor basket 
ball court, its athletic grounds and grandstand, in addi- 
tion to the indoor gymnasium, offers a good example of 
effective preparation for physical training. William D. 
Lewis of the William Penn High School sends all students 
who have physical defects to the gymnasium three, four, 
or even five times a week, until the defects are corrected. 
These exceptions merely serve to emphasize the fact that 
we have not yet learned that high school children have 
bodies which are as much in need of development and 
training as the minds which the bodies support. 

Several real attempts are being made to teach high 
school boys and girls to care for their bodies, as they 



108 THE NEW EDUCATION 

would for any other precious thing. Hygiene is taught, 
positively, — the old time ' ' don 'ts ' ' being replaced by a 
series of ''do's.'' In many schools, careful efforts are 
being made to give a sound sex education. The program 
at "William Penn, in addition to the earlier work in 
biology and in personal and community hygiene, includes 
a senior course, extending through the year, in Domestic 
Sanitation and Eugenics. The course, given by the 
women in charge of Physical Training, deals frankly 
with the domestic and personal problems which the girls 
must face. The time is ripe for other schools to fall in 
line behind these much-needed pioneers. 

The course of study in the modern high school is a 
broad one. Latin may always be taken, and sometimes 
there is Greek. French, German and Spanish, Mathema- 
tics, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Civics are 
almost universally offered on the cultural side of the 
curriculum. In addition, girls may take dress designing, 
sewing, millinery and home economics; boys may take 
wood-working, forge work, machine-tool work, electricity, 
printing, and house designing ; and both boys and girls 
have an opportunity to elect art, arts and crafts work 
and music. 

In some schools the combination of subjects group 
themselves into definite courses, as in the Newton High 
School, which offers, — 

The Classical Course. 

The Scientific Course. 

The General Course. 

The Technical Course. 

The Technology-College Course. 

The Extra Technical Course. 

The Fine Arts Course. 

The Business Course. 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 109 

Other schools, like the Indianapolis Manual Training 
School, permit the pupil, with the advice of the principal, 
to make his own combination of subjects. Whether pre- 
pared by the school or by the pupil, however, the courses 
lead to college, to normal schools, to advanced technical 
schools, or to some definite vocation. On one subject, 
progressive high schools are in absolute agreement, — the 
course of study must furnish both culture and technical 
training in a form which meets the needs of high school 
children. 

X From School to Shop and Back Again 

The tendency toward vocational training finds its 
extreme expression in the so-called Industrial Co-opera- 
tive Course in which boys and girls spend part of their 
time in school and part in the factory. Note this legal 
document. "The party of the second part agrees to 
place, as far as possible, the facilities of his establish- 
ment at the disposal of the School Committee for gen- 
eral educational purposes along industrial lines." In 
these words, the individual manufacturers of Providence, 
Rhode Island, who are co-operating with the school board 
for the establishment of the industrial co-operative 
course in the Technical High School, place their mills 
and factories at the disposal of the school authorities. 
The plan instituted at the suggestion of the manufac- 
turers themselves has won the approval of all parties 
during the two years of its operation. 

The Providence experiment differs from those of Cin- 
cinnati and Fitchburg, Mass., in two respects, — in the 
first place, the school authorities have a written contract 
with the manufacturers. In the second place, they may 
decide what the character of the shop-work shall be. 
The boy who elects to take the industrial co-operative 



110 THE NEW EDUCATION 

course in Providence spends ten weeks in a shop at the 
end of his freshman year. Apprenticeship papers are 
signed, the boy gives a bond, which is forfeited if he 
drops the course without a satisfactory reason, and for 
three years he spends 29 weeks in the shop and 20 weeks 
in school, alternating, one week in the shop, the next in 
the school. For their shop-work the boys receive ten 
cents, twelve cents, and fourteen cents an hour during 
the first, second, and third years, respectively. Though 
this wage is not high, it is sufficient to enable the boys 
to earn enough during the year ($175 to $250) to pay 
for their keep at home during their high school course. 

At the present time sixty-two Providence boys are 
working part time in machine shops, in drafting rooms, 
in machine tool construction, in pattern making and in 
jewelry making. In order to keep the scheme elastic, 
the school offers to form a class in any trade for which 
sixteen or more boys will apply. 

The part-time course is primarily educational and sec- 
ondarily vocational. Since it may determine the charac- 
ter of the shop-work, the school is in a position to insure 
its educational value. Again, the academic training is 
still received in the school, while the technical work, here- 
tofore done in school rooms, is carried on in the fields 
of real industry. As a supplement of the old time 
system of apprenticeship, the part-time school is an 
undoubted success, because it adds to shop apprentice 
work all of the essential elements of a high school 
education. 

XI Fitting the High School Graduate Into Life 

The high school has not done its full duty when it has 
educated the child, — it must go a step farther and edu- 
cate him for something; then it must go a step beyond 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE m 

that and help him to find himself in his chosen pro- 
fession. This vocational guidance which is filling so 
large a place in public discussions, may mean guidance 
to a job or it may include guidance in the job. In either 
case children must be led to decide upon the kind of work 
for which they are fitted before they leave the school. 

Jesse B. Davis, Principal of the Central High School 
at Grand Rapids, furnishes a brilliant example of this 
vocational directing. Mr. Davis begins his work through 
the theme writing and oral composition of the seventh 
and eighth grades. The purpose of the pupils' reading 
and discussion is to arouse their vocational ambition and 
to lead them to appreciate the value of further education 
and training for life. This study upon the part of the 
pupil is supplemented by talks given by Mr. Davis, 
prominent business and professional men and high school 
boys who have come back to finish their education after 
a few years of battle with the world. 

The high school classes in English are small — never 
more than twenty-five, and the work is so arranged that 
the teacher may get a good idea of the capability of each 
student. To facilitate this, the English Department has 
prepared a series of essay subjects in the writing of 
which the pupil gives the teacher a very definite idea 
of himself. Beginning with "My Three Wishes;" the 
pupil next writes a story about his ancestry; an essay 
on ''My Church," which explains his belief; an essay 
on ' ' The Part I 'd Like to Play in High School ; " a study 
of "My Best Friend," and finally an essay on "The 
Work of My Early School Days," which shows the 
pupil's likes and dislikes. In addition to this, the 
teacher notes any physical defects — eyesight, hearing, 
and the like — which might incapacitate the pupil for 
particular vocations. This data, together with reports 



112 THE NEW EDUCATION 

from all departments on neatness, sincerity, ambition 
and other qualities is filed in the office. 

During the second term of the freshman year papers 
are written on approved biographies, dealing in each case 
with the qualities, opportunities and education of the 
great one. These essays, read in class, form the basis for 
a compilation of the elements necessary for success in 
life. 

The work of the sophomore year begins with the 
preparation of a class list of professions, semi-professions 
and trades, — a list which is checked with the permanent 
list kept by the department. Succeeding classes thus dis- 
cover the breadth of the vocational field, besides adding 
to the knowledge accumulated by their predecessors. 

After completing this list, the pupils write a letter 
to the teacher, choosing a vocation and assigning reasons 
for the choice. When the pupil cannot decide, the 
teacher assigns the vocation apparently best suited to the 
pupil's capacity. An essay on his vocation is then 
prepared by each pupil, showing first, what kind of 
activity and what responsibilities the vocation involves ; 
second, its social, intellectual and financial advantages; 
third, the corresponding disadvantages; fourth, the 
qualifications and traits necessary to success in the voca- 
tion; and fifth, the reasons for choosing the vocation. 
Then, under the advice of the teacher, the pupil writes 
to some man well known in the profession of his choice — 
some lawyer, mining engineer, doctor or contractor — 
explaining what he is doing, and asking for advice. The 
generous responses given by men in all walks of life do 
much to confirm the pupil in his faith, or to make him 
see that his choice is an unwise one. 

At the beginning of the junior year those pupils pre- 
paring for college send for the catalogues of the colleges 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE II3 

which stand highest in the line of work in which they are 
interested, and write an essay, giving the comparative 
value of the courses offered by the various institutions. 
By this means judgment takes the place of sentiment 
in the selection of a college. While the college pre- 
paratory pupils are engaged in writing on their college 
courses, pupils who are going directly from the high 
school into business write an elaborate essay on the kind 
of preparation necessary for their vocation, the qualities 
requisite for success in it, and the best place and means 
of entering it. Studies of the proper relations between 
employer and employed occupy the second half of the 
junior year. 

The work of the senior year deals, in the first half, 
with the relation between a citizen and his city ; the sec- 
ond half, with the relation between a citizen and the 
state. The pupil has thus passed from the narrower to 
the broader aspects of his work in life. 

The effectiveness of the work is enhanced by the 
organization of the high school boys into a Junior Asso- 
ciation of Commerce (in an exact imitation of the Grand 
Rapids Association of Commerce), which meets in the 
rooms of the latter on Saturday morning ; transacts busi- 
ness ; listens to an address by a specialist, and then visits 
his works, if he is engaged in a local industry. On the 
Saturday before Thanksgiving (1912), for example, 
Mr. VanWallen, of the VanWallen Tannery Co., gave 
the boys a talk on the tanning industry, then took them 
through his tannery, where they saw the processes of 
manufacture. The business men of Grand Rapids, who 
are highly pleased with this practical turn in education, 
co-operate heartily in every way. The boys are urged, 
during the summer months, to take a position in the 
work which they have chosen, start at the bottom and 



114 THE NEW EDUCATION 

find out whether their beliefs regarding the industry- 
are true. Then, too, the Free Library makes a point of 
collecting books and articles on various professions and 
vocations, and placing them prominently before the stu- 
dents. The English Department (with five periods a 
week) does other work, but none so vital to the pupils' 
lives as this of directing them in the thing which they 
hope to do when they leave school. 

The school may do more than direct the pupils in the 
choice of their occupations, by actually securing posi- 
tions for them. The head of the Commercial Depart- 
ment in the Newton (Massachusetts) High School has a 
card for every student, giving on one side a record of 
class work for four years, and on the other side a state- 
ment of positions and pay of the graduate. New 
pupils are placed; old pupils are offered better oppor- 
tunities. Employers are interviewed in attempts to have 
them promote graduates. Through this system, Mr. 
Maxim keeps in constant touch with the labor market 
and with graduates of his school. 

Certainly the high school must prepare students for 
life. "Whether, in addition, it shall constitute itself a 
Public Employment Bureau, finding positions for stu- 
dents, keeping in touch with their careers, and assisting 
in their advancement, is a matter yet to be determined. 

XII The High School as a Public Servant 

Will the high school retain its present form? Prob- 
ably not. If the Berkeley-Los Angeles plan prevails, 
there will be three steps in the public schools, — from ele- 
mentary to junior high, to high school. If the Gary 
plan wins, there will be twelve years of schooling, fol- 
lowing one another as consecutively as day follows night. 
Whether the Los Angeles or the Gary plan is adopted, 



HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE 115 

one thing seems reasonably certain, — the high school 
will keep in close touch with life. 

The high school is securing a surer grip on the world 
w^ith each passing day. It is reaching out toward the 
grades, calling the pupils to come ; it is reaching out into 
the world, making places there for them to occupy. The 
modern high school has ceased to be an adjunct to the 
college. Instead, it is a distinctive unit in educational 
life, taking boys and girls between the ages of fourteen 
and nineteen and relating them to the world in which 
they must live. 

The era of the high school course is being succeeded 
by the era of the high school boy and the high school 
girl. First, last, now and always, the boys and girls, 
not the course, deserve primary consideration. What- 
ever their needs, the high school must supply them if 
it is to become a public servant, responsible for training 
children of high school age in the noble art of living. 



CHAPTEE VI 
HIGHER EDUCATION AT LOWVILLE ^ 

I Lowville and the Neighborhood 

Away off in northwestern New York State, where the 
sun shines fiercely in the summer mid-day, where the 
ice forms thick on the lakes, and the snow lies on the 
north side of the hills from Thanksgiving well on to 
Easter, there is a town of some three thousand inhabi- 
tants, called Lowville. The comfortable homes, brick 
stores, wide tree-bordered streets, smiling hills and giddy 
children look very much the same at Lowville as they 
do in any one of a thousand similar towns east of the 
Mississippi. Situated far back from the line of ordinary 
travel, the town is typical of a great class. 

Stretching in all directions about Lowville is a fertile, 
prosperous, agricultural region, farmed by good farmers, 
who are intelligently awake to the problem of scientific 
agriculture in its multiple phases. 

These farmers grow fruits, raise general farm produce, 
breed a little stock, cut some timber, besides all of the 
time-honored occupations of the professional farmer. 
The boys and girls growing up in the town or the neigh- 
boring countryside, blessed with good air, and a cheap 
supply of wholesome food, look pleasantly forward 
toward life as something worth living. 

So much for the good side of Lowville. Sad indeed is 
it to recall that there is another side. Anyone who has 

1 Much of the material in this chapter appeared originally in 
the Journal of Education. 

116 



HIGHER EDUCATION AT LOWVILLE HJ 

been in close contact with country life can readily 
imagine the ignorance, bigotry, prejudice, unfairness 
and unsociableness of the population; the tendency to 
cling to the past no matter what its shortcomings; the 
unwillingness to venture into even the rosiest future 
which involves change. Lowville is blessed a great deal 
and cursed a very little. The blessings are being aug- 
mented and the curses minimized by means of the local 
high school. 

II Lowville Academy 

• 

Lowville Academy is an ancient private school whose 
usefulness was immensely enhanced when it was con- 
verted into a public high school. When Mr. W. F. H. 
Breeze took over the principalship he made no particular 
objection to the old class rooms and wooden stairs, but 
he was very insistent upon discovering, first, what the 
community needed, and second, whether or not the school 
was meeting the need. 

More than half (at the present time sixty-five per 
cent.) of the pupils at the school came from outside of 
the village. That is, they come from the farms. As 
farmers' boys, many of them have been brought up to 
all of the unscientific crudities which have been handed 
down in American agriculture since the early settlers 
took the land from the Indians in grateful recognition 
of their instructions in fertilization. While many agri- 
cultural anachronisms may be laid to the door of the red- 
skins, planting by the moon and several equally absurd 
customs are traceable to the higher civilization of West- 
em Europe. 

Saturated with traditional agricultural lore — some 
better and some worse — the boys and girls from outside 
of Lowville, sixty-five in each hundred high school stu- 



118 THE NEW EDUCATION 

dents, were growing up to become the owners of promis- 
ing New York farms. They needed, first of all, an 
education which should equip them with all of the cul- 
ture of our schools, beside giving them a knowledge of 
the sciences of agriculture and of mechanics. Those 
boys and girls who were planning to go to college 
required an advance course in those purgatorial topics 
which, for some inexplicable reason, are still regarded as 
necessary preliminaries to a college education. Most of 
the girls in Lowville and the immediate vicinity hope to 
marry sooner or later, and to preside over wholesome, 
clean homes. For home-making, also, there were certain 
possible educational provisions. 

As prospective farmers, mechanics, college students, 
business men and women, as prospective fathers and 
mothers, the boys and girls of Lowville were looking to 
the schools — high as well as elementary — for an edu- 
cation which should enable them to do successfully and 
efficiently those things which life was holding before 
them. 

Furthermore, Lowville had no spot around which com- 
munity interests and civic ideas could center. There 
was intelligent interest in Lowville, its streets, schools, 
trees, houses, and business interests; there was, too, an 
interest, expressed among the neighboring farmers, in 
the wonderful strides of agriculture ; furthermore, men 
and women were anxious to discuss political and social 
happenings in other parts of the world. 

What more natural than that the school be converted 
into a center of interest and education for Lowville and 
the surrounding territory. Adults, as well as young 
folks, needed school help. Adults as well as young 
folks should then be accommodated in the Lowville 
schools. 



HIGHEE EDUCATION AT LOWVILLE 119 

III The School's Opportunity 

' ' There was a peculiar opportunity, ' ' said Mr. Breeze, 
in his crisp direct way. ''The place needed organizing 
in educational lines. People were anxious to have it 
done. They wanted the advantage of a modern educa- 
tional institution, but no one had provided it, so I made 
up my mind that my business was to do it. ' ' 

Mr. Breeze made his first innovation in the course of 
study, supplementing the old course by domestic science, 
several phases of agriculture and mechanics. Then he 
correlated the various branches in such a way that the 
subjects all harmonized with the work which any par- 
ticular student was doing. 

"We made up our minds," Mr. Breeze explained, 
''that if we were to hold the children and to educate 
them usefully, we must make our course fit the things 
which they had to do in life. The work must come down 
to earth. It had to be practical — that is, applicable to 
everyday affairs. Some people confuse practical with 
pecuniary. There is no relation between the two words. 
Practical means usable. We set out to make a usable 
education. ' ' 

"No education is usable which has frills," Mr. Breeze 
insists. ' ' Frills are nice for looks, but you can 't put on 
frills until you have a garment to which they may be 
attached. Our school is providing the garment — we 
will leave the frills to some one else." 

With this idea in mind, the applied courses in the 
school were organized. Wood-alcohol cook stoves, such 
as those used in the village, ordinary sewing machines, 
typewriters for the commercial course, and the simplest 
tools for the machine shop, made up the equipment. 

' ' These boys have but a few tools at home, ' ' Mr. Breeze 



120 THE NEW EDUCATION 

says. ''When they go on the farm they will be com- 
pelled to use these tools. Why, then, should they be 
taught mechanics with tools which they cannot dupli- 
cate on their farms without an unjustifiable extrava- 
gance ? " 

IV Field Work as Education 

Pursuant to such philosophy, the boys began their 
shop-work by equipping the shop, building benches, tool- 
chests, cabinets, and saw horses; putting lath and plaster 
on the ceiling; setting up the simple tools and putting 
the shop in running order. Meanwhile, the agricultural 
students set up two cream separators and a milk-tester, 
and arranged their laboratory. Then the school was 
ready for applied work, or rather, the students having 
graduated from a course in shop equipment, were ready 
for shop practice. 

The entire class in agriculture makes inspection of 
nearby farms — here to see a well-managed orchard, 
there a new type of cow-barn or silo. Again they inspect 
the soil of a district, going carefully over it, picking 
samples and testing them on return to the school. In 
fruit-packing season, the students visit the packing 
houses, or else, in the case of some of the boys, they take 
a week of employment with a good fruit packer. In 
season they practice tree pruning, grafting, budding, 
transplanting and spraying. Whenever possible, the 
applied work of the school is done in connection with 
the real applied work of life. 

The physics and chemistry are both related to the 
agriculture and the mechanics courses in the most inti- 
mate manner. From the earliest lessons in physics 
through analyses of heat, light and the principles of 
mechanics, the theories are constantly interpreted in 



HIGHER EDUCATION AT LOWVILLE 121 

practical problems which arise in the daily work of the 
Lowville farmer. The physics teacher, enthusiastic over 
his students and his work, builds machines and testing 
devices, which the boys and girls use in solving the prob- 
lems which they bring from their homes. No less close 
to the life of the place is the chemical laboratory, which 
offers opportunity for the analysis of soil, the chemistry 
of fertilizers, experiments in testing food and milk, and 
a number of other matters pertaining to agriculture and 
domestic life. 

The mechanical courses are closely related to the work 
in agriculture, since most of the boys who take up the 
mechanical work are to go on the farms. The course 
in mechanics passes quickly over the elements of the 
work — most boys have learned to use saw, plane, chisel, 
auger, and hammer years before. The smithing work of 
tempering, annealing, welding, soldering and removing 
rust, all leads up to the real work of the shops, — the 
making of products. The boys make pruning knives, 
squares and drawing boards, grafting hooks, nail boxes, 
apple-boxing devices (for this is an apple country), 
cement rollers, mallets, whiffle-trees, bob-sleds, holders 
for saw filing, bag-holders, chicken-coops, poultry exhibit 
boxes, hammer handles, greenhouse flats. Besides, they 
have exercises in belt-lacing, in cement work, and re- 
inforced concrete. Then, too, they make models of barns 
and bridges, computing strains, lumber-costs, labor-costs, 
floor spacing and arrangement. 

The agricultural course deals, in some detail, with 
fruit-growing, animal husbandry, grain-growing, and 
related topics. Though the scope of such a course is 
necessarily limited in a high school, it forms an inval- 
uable addition to the knowledge of the boy who cannot 
go to an agricultural college before he begins his life 



122 THE NEW EDUCATION 

on the farm. Taught by an agricultural expert, the 
work assumes real importance to the prospective farmer. 
Nor are the girls of Lowville neglected. 

V Real Domestic Science 

The domestic science department, in charge of an 
expert, takes up household economics, sewing, dietetics 
and cooking. The work throughout is practical, the girls 
learning the principles of sanitation, and their applica- 
tion to the household ; domestic art and home decoration ; 
lighting, heating and ventilation. The sewing classes 
cover the usual exercises in simple hemming and darn- 
ing, making towels, hemming napkins, and the like ; then 
underclothes, and later dresses are made. 

In the cooking laboratory the girls learn food values 
and food combinations, the cooking of simple dishes, 
the preparation of entire meals. The girl who finishes 
the domestic science course in the Lowville Academy 
is competent to organize a home, cook, sew, keep house 
and make as efficient use of her opportunities as does 
her brother who has been trained in mechanics or 
agriculture. 

It is not in the applied courses alone that an extraor- 
dinary amount of co-operation has been attained. The 
academic branches, likewise, are so adjusted as to bear 
directly upon the work of the remaining courses. The 
Academic co-ordination is particularly noticeable in the 
English work, which is required of everyone during the 
entire high school course. English composition is made 
to serve as a connecting, co-ordinating study — related to 
all of the other courses in the school. 

The student in agriculture writes reports on various 
phases of agricultural work, collecting them in a folder 
and arranging them in order, according to subject. 



HIGHER EDUCATION AT LOWVILLE 123 

Chemistry reports, history reports, all are made a legiti- 
mate part of the work in English. 

The results of this system have been more than satis- 
factory to Mr. Breeze and his staff of co-workers. Stu- 
dents who would have left at the end of the grammar 
school, are attracted by the high school program, and 
"saved" by a high school course. The appeal of the 
school is a wide one. There are no class of boys and 
girls in Lowville who cannot find something worth while 
in the high school. Often a student otherwise not bril- 
liant will succeed remarkably in a particular line. Of 
one such boy in particular Mr. Breeze spoke. 

VI One Instance of Success 

''He had no taste for Greek, but his reports and 
analysis in agriculture and mechanics were brilliant. 
The excellent drawing and sketching and the careful 
work showed how much appeal the applied course had 
made to his mind ; yet but for the agricultural course he 
would never have come to high school. A farmer's son 
with little taste for the ordinary academic studies was 
inspired by the idea of improved, scientific farming and 
was getting a thorough insight into the principles of 
agriculture, chemistry, physics, and mechanics, which 
will be of the greatest service to him when he takes up 
farming. Such topics as judging the age of cows, breed 
of cattle, cost of milk production, the cost of cow-barn 
construction, grain, hay, cattle rations, silage, and nutri- 
tion will all bear directly on the work of the farm in 
which he is so deeply interested. 

So much for the contribution of the Lo\\wille High 
School to the students who have gone out of its class- 
rooms and class excursions, stronger in body and more 
alert of mind. No less remarkable has been its service 



124 THE NEW EDUCATION 

to the community. At the suggestion of the school 
authorities acting in co-operation with the Grange, the 
State, and several other agencies, Lowville has secured 
an agricultural specialist, whose business it is to travel 
through the countryside, advising farmers, discussing 
their problems and suggesting better methods of operat- 
ing the farms, or of experimenting in new directions. 
Each winter for one week, a school for adults is held, 
with courses in agriculture for the men and courses in 
domestic science for the women. The teachers, — experts 
from the Cornell School of Agriculture, — are excep- 
tionally well prepared to deal with the problems of New 
York State farmers. 

Higher education at Lowville is education for every- 
one in Lowville and vicinity who wants it. With one 
eye on community needs and the other on the best means 
of supplying them, the Lowville Academy is giving to 
the citizens of Lowville a twentieth century higher 
education. 



CHAPTER VII 
A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM ^ 

I "Co-operation" and '* Progress! vism" 

If any two words in the English language can express 
the spirit of the Cincinnati schools, they are "co-opera- 
tion" and ''progressivism." The people of Cincinnati, 
high and low, have banded themselves together in an 
endeavor to make good schools. Cincinnati schools are 
not a monument to any individual or group of indivi- 
duals, rather they are the handiwork of the citizenship. 
In their eagerness for educational progress, the people 
are not hypnotized by every cry of " lo here ! lo there ! ' ' 
nor do they live in terror of new educational ideas. Their 
one aim, the education of Cincinnati's children, takes 
precedence over every other consideration. Perhaps that 
fact explains both the co-operation and the progressivism. 

Co-operation in the educational work of Cincinnati 
has been developed to a remarkable degree. ''There 
is not a civic society in the whole town which is not 
working with the schools," says former Superintendent 
Dyer. Mr. Dyer might have left out the word "civic" 
and still have been very close to the truth. 

Mr. Frederick A. Geier, a leader among the manu- 
facturers who have made possible the "half time in 
shop, half time in school" system, says of his activity 
in co-operating with the school authorities: "As a 
citizen of Cincinnati, I am interested in the schools 

1 Much of this material appeared originally in Educational 
Foundations. 

125 



126 THE NEW EDUCATION 

for two reasons: first, because good schools will bring 
under their influence the maximum number of pupils 
and parents, and it is the best agency I can conceive of 
for producing a high quality of citizenship ; second, as 
a manufacturer I feel that the material prosperity of 
a community is directly related to the mental and 
manual equipment of its people. ' ' Showing his faith by 
his works, Mr. Geier has labored in season and out of 
season to make the schools of Cincinnati the most pro- 
gressive in the country. 

Speaking as "a woman and mother," Mrs. Isabella 
C. Pendleton, of the Civic League, which has played 
an active part in building up school sentiment, says: 
**I consider that the most important features of our 
school system are the manual training for boys and the 
domestic science for girls. I am happy to say that 
to-day a girl on graduating from our schools is capable 
of taking care of a home." As public schools go, that 
is not an insignificant achievement. No wonder Mrs. 
Pendleton, a woman and mother, is interested in schools 
which accomplish such vital results. 

From what extraordinary sources do the schools in 
Cincinnati secure their support! '^AU of the local 
dentists have been brought into close contact with the 
school system by the efforts of the Dental Society to 
introduce mouth hygiene into the schools," says Dr. 
Sidney G. Rauh. ''"We dentists," adds Dr. Rauh, ''are 
firm believers in general co-operation. ' ' No less cordial 
is the Board of Health in its endorsement of the schools, 
and in its efforts to raise the health standard of school 
children. 

"I do not believe there is any city in the United 
States which offers as good an example of the spirit of 
co-operation as Cincinnati does," affirms Carl Dehoney, 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 127 

of the Chamber of Commerce. ''Why are we so active 
in co-operating with the schools? Simply because we 
realize that good schools, and especially practical 
schools, which will fit young men and women for their 
real life work, have a tremendous bearing upon the 
efficiency of the people of the city." Mr. W. C. Cauldius, 
also of the Chamber of Commerce, says: "Our school 
development is the result of a few years of public sup- 
port and sympathy." In similar enthusiastic words 
the leaders of every phase of Cincinnati life express 
their interest in educational progress. 

II An Educational Creed 

Let no one infer from what has been said that the 
people of Cincinnati are agreed upon all of the details 
of educational policy, nor upon the fundamentals either, 
for that matter, but they have adopted an educational 
creed which runs about as follows: 

1. I believe in making the schools provide for the 
educational necessities of every child. 

2. I believe that this can be done when all work 
together. 

3. I believe that new ideas are the life-blood of 
educational advance. 

That simple creed adopted by teachers, principals, 
mothers, manufacturers, dentists and trade unionists 
has become a great motive force in the upbuilding of 
the Cincinnati schools. 

The most evident thing about the Cincinnati school 
organization is its democracy. The feudal spirit of 
lordship and serfdom existing in many schools between 
superintendents and principals on the one hand, and 
teachers on the other, is nowhere evident in the Cin- 
cinnati schools; instead, each teacher, thrown upon her 



128 THE NEW EDUCATION 

own initiative, is a creative artist, solving her particu- 
lar problem as she believes that it should be solved, and 
abiding by the consequence of her failure or success. 

Early in his work Mr. Dyer made it clear that he 
would not tolerate a mechanical system of education. 
''Up here on the hill, in a wealthy suburban district, is 
a grammar school. Its organization, administration and 
course of study must necessarily differ from that other 
school, located in the heart of the factory district. The 
principal of each of these schools has a problem to face 
— each will succeed in proportion as he grasps the sig- 
nificance of his own problem and the readiest means for 
its solution." Is not that a refreshing sentiment from 
a superintendent of city schools? Note this other de- 
lightful touch: ''My teachers soon learned that I 
regard the teacher who works exactly like another 
teacher as pretty poor stuff." Before the axe of such 
incisive radicalism, how the antiquated structure of the 
old school machinery came crashing to the ground, to 
be replaced by a system which recognized each teacher 
as an individual builder of manhood and womanhood, 
working to meet the needs of individual children. It 
is not an idle boast which the English make when they 
glory in the absence of a curriculum; for even the best 
curriculum, if mismanaged, is speedily converted into a 
noose, the knot of which adjusts itself mechanically 
under the left ear of teacher and child alike. The 
school authorities of Cincinnati destroyed both knot and 
rope by giving to their teachers and principals this 
injunction: "Make your school fit the needs of your 
children and your community. ' ' 

The old-time, machine-minded school superintendent^ 
filled with the spirit of co-operative coercion, assembles 
his teachers. "Now let's all work together," he exclaims, 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 129 

''Here, Susie Smith, this is what you are to teach your 
pupils, and this is the way in which you are to do it." 
It was in quite a different spirit that Mr. Dyer said to 
each one of his teachers : ' ' You do your work, I '11 do 
mine, and together we will make the schools go." It 
was in this spirit that the teachers were called together 
to confer on the reorganization of the course of study. 
Each teacher in each grade had her say in the matter. 
If the most insignificant teacher in Cincinnati said to 
Mr. Dyer : "I have an idea that I think would improve 
the work in my grade, ' ' his invariable reply was : ' ' Then 
try it. There is no way to determine the value of ideas 
except to try them." By that policy Mr. Dyer sur- 
rounded himself with a group of vitally interested 
people, each one suited to the task in which he believed 
implicitly, and each one fully convinced that the success 
or failure of that part of the Cincinnati school system 
with which he was immediately concerned, depended 
directly upon his efforts. No wonder the schools suc- 
ceeded ! 

Ill Vitalizing the Kindergarten 

The kindergartens are at the basis of the educational 
system of Cincinnati, and they are in charge of a woman 
who believes in herself and in her work. Perhaps the 
people of Cincinnati are not justified in believing that 
their kindergartens are the very best in the whole United 
States, but Miss Julia Bothwell, who directs them, says, 
modestly enough, that she has visited kindergartens in 
many cities, adopting their schemes and improving in 
response to their suggestions, until she is convinced that 
no other city in the land can show a better kindergarten 
system than that of Cincinnati. In truth, her plan is 
ordinarily referred to as the ' ' Cincinnati idea. ' ' 



130 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Cincinnati children begin their kindergarten work at 
fonr and a half or five, entering the first grade at six. 
While in the kindergarten they play the games and sing 
the songs that all kindergartens play and sing, but with 
this difference: their plays and songs are built around 
the things that they do. 

The yellow October leaves of Cincinnati's parks half 
shadow the activity of the busy classes of little kinder- 
garten folks who go there to work and to learn. The 
Park Commissioners, like every one else in Cincinnati, 
are in thorough sympathy with the work of the schools, 
so they allot to each kindergarten class a plot in the 
park, in which the children — using all of the tools them- 
selves — plant tulip bulbs under the direction of the park 
gardeners. 

'^ Tulips are the first thing up in the spring,''' Miss 
Both well explained, *'so we have decided to use them. 
For years we tried gardens, but children of kindergar- 
ten age are not willing to give gardens as much atten- 
tion as they require; then, too, the gardens ran wild 
during the summer, so we have settled on the tulip. 
After the children have planted the bulbs they sing and 
talk about their work. Then, early in the spring, they 
begin to visit their plots, watching the first shoots of 
green as they appear, looking eagerly for the buds, and 
then, at last, as the reward of their interest, picking 
the flowers and taking them home. Thus, each child, 
during his kindergarten course, sees the complete cycle 
from bulb to flower." 

Besides this flower-culture in the park, the children 
grow hyacinths in the school rooms, visit the woods to 
collect autumn leaves and spring flowers, make excur- 
sions to the country, where they may see animals and 
crops, and always, for a few days after an excursion. 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 131 

talk about the things which they saw, draw them, sing 
about them and play games about them. In order to 
facilitate the work the Board of Education leases a 
farm, to which the kindergartens go in succession. By 
these means the life of the city kindergarten child is 
thoroughly linked with nature. 

These things are not new in kindergartening, how- 
ever. They have merely taken firm root in the fertile 
soil of Cincinnati's educational enthusiasm. The real 
excellence of Miss Both well 's experiment consists in con- 
necting the kindergarten with the early elementary 
grades on the one hand and with the community on the 
other. 

The first grade children of Cincinnati come back to 
the kindergarten teachers for an hour's kindergarten- 
ing once each week, in order to clinch the kindergarten 
influence on the lives of the first graders. The first 
grade teachers meet the director of kindergartening 
once each week, for a discussion of kindergarten 
methods, and an initiation into the kindergarten spirit. 
Thus the lump of first grade abstraction is leavened 
with the leaven of kindergarten concretes, and the grade 
teachers get the spirit of kindergarten work. In the 
near future Miss Bothwell hopes to have the kinder- 
garten work extend to the second grade, in order that 
the spirit, rhythm, harmony and joy of the kindergarten 
may thoroughly permeate the roots of the Cincinnati 
school system. 

Even more significant — if anything could be more 
significant than the breakdown of the ironclad, first 
grade traditions — is the grip which the kindergartens 
of Cincinnati have secured on the people. The Cincin- 
nati kindergartener is more than a teacher — she serves 
many masters. In the morning she holds kindergarten 



132 THE NEW EDUCATION 

classes. On two afternoons a week she does kinder- 
garten work with first grade children; on one afternoon 
she holds a conference with the supervisor; on a fourth 
afternoon she visits the classes of first grade teachers or 
confers with mothers ' clubs, and on her remaining after- 
noon she visits her children in their homes. Out of 
these varied duties has come : first, a group spirit among 
the kindergarteners, built upon frequent interchange 
of plans and ideas; second, an understanding of the 
relation between the problems of the kindergarten and 
the problems of the grades; third, a sympathetic grasp 
of the home conditions surrounding the life of many a 
difficult child; and fourth, sixty-one mothers' clubs, one 
organized in connection with each kindergarten, which 
furnish a social gathering-place for mothers, an oppor- 
tunity to influence parental ideas, and a body of in- 
valuable public sentiment. 

The idea of a kindergarten, usually regarded as a 
small part of the school program, has been evolved until, 
in this one city, it is a potent influence, working on 
children, teachers, parents and public opinion. 

IV Regenerating the Grades 

The kindergarten is not alone in its appeal to the 
child and in its affiliation with the community. Tradi- 
tional grade education has likewise been modified and 
rehabilitated until it makes an appeal to parent and 
child alike. In the first place, a consistent effort has 
been made to provide accommodations for the physical 
education in the grades of the fifty-seven elementary 
schools. Twenty-five now have fully equipped gymna- 
siums in which children have two or three periods of 
exercise each week. In the schools not so equipped the 
physical work is confined to calisthenics. Each year the 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 133 

Board of Education appropriates five hundred dollars 
for the Public School Athletic League, which organizes 
meets and games, open to all public school pupils free 
of charge. Besides field days, baseball, soccer and foot- 
ball there is an athletic badge awarded to all pupils 
who pass an ''efficiency" test in athletic activities. 

The academic work of the grades is alive with en- 
thusiasm. History, so often made a mass of dead names 
and dates, is taught in terms of life. The children learn 
that history is in reality a record of the things which 
people did, and of the forces which were at work in their 
lives ; furthermore, that the commonplace acts of to-day 
will be the history of to-morrow. Translated into ideas 
and social changes, history stimulates thought, turning 
the child's mind from the purely personal side of life 
to the social activities of which history is made. 

Arithmetic and geography begin at home, in the 
things which the children know and do. Both are 
taught in terms of child experience. Both call to the 
child mind the things of daily life. 

English, too, which is so important an element in 
education, is made to reflect child experiences. Teach- 
ing the reading lesson of "Eyes and No Eyes" one 
teacher asked her class : ' ' Well, children, what did you 
see on your way to school this morning ? What did you 
see, Elmer?" 

"Well, I saw — I saw — " and Elmer sat down. 

"I saw that it had been raining in the night by the 
mud in the streets," said Alice; while John had seen 
trolley cars, and remembered that the number on one 
of them was 647. 

A seventh grade girl had read the Psalm beginning, 
"Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who 
shall stand in His holy place T' After asking what a 



134 THE NEW EDUCATION 

psalm was, and who wrote the Psalms, the teacher 
asked : 

''Who was David?" 

''He was the king of Palestine," replied one boy 
promptly. After straightening out the history the 
teacher next asked : 

"For what was David noted?" 

"For being Solomon's father," ventured one little 
girl. 

"Oh, no," protested a boy, "He was the fighter." 

"Sure enough," said the teacher, "would the fact 
that he was a warrior naturally influence his thoughts ? ' ' 
After an affirmative answer from the class : ' ' Where do 
we find any evidence of that in this Psalm, George?" 
asked the teacher. 

George considered the reading a moment. "Oh, I 
see, it's where he says, 'The Lord mighty in battle.' " 

After an elaboration of this idea the teacher went on 
to ask why David wrote, "Lift up your heads, oh ye 
gates, and the King of Glory shall come in." By care- 
ful questioning the class was led to see that cities had 
walls and gates; that David, who had won many vic- 
tories, was accustomed to have the gates thrown wide 
to receive him, and that his triumphal entries had made 
a deep impression on his thoughts. After some more 
discussion the Psalm was read again, this time with sur- 
prising intelligence and feeling. 

One eighth grade class in English was engaged in 
preparing a catalog of all of the pictures in the school, 
looking up the painters, their lives, their principal 
works, and the circumstances connected with the paint- 
ing of the pictures which hung on the school wall. In 
the same room a girl had written a description of a 
sunset, in which she had said: "The western sky is 



\ A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 135 

illuminated with a fiery red, and the edges of the clouds 
are also tinted with a silvery hue." 

''What would Corot say about that?" asked the 
teacher. 

The girl thought a moment. ''I guess he would say 
that there was too much color." 

''Yes," smiled the teacher, ''he would say, 'Let's go 
home and wait for a few moments.' " 

The essay work in the upper grades is linked with all 
of the other school work. The children write about 
civics, architecture, localities, books and pictures. One 
girl of thirteen wrote on "The Reaper" — "As I enter 
my bedroom one picture especially catches my gaze. 
It hangs on the eastern wall. It is the picture of a 
large city by moonlight. The moon is bright and the 
stars are out. A beautiful lake borders the far end of 
the city, and the moon makes the lake look like a mirror. 
The church steeple stands out clear against the sky. It 
is a beautiful summer night, and while the city sleeps 
an angel descends and bears a little child to the heavens 
above. Some mother must have given up one of her 
beloved flowers." 

No less valuable are the essays describing an ideal 
kitchen, a location for a house^ a home, school life, and 
the various other things with which the child comes in 
contact. 

Last among the academic branches, there is a carefully 
organized eighth grade course in civics, which, begin- 
ning with the geography and early history of Cincin- 
nati, covers family relations and the tenement problem ; 
the protection of public health — street cleaning, sewage, 
water, smoke abatement, and the activities of the Board 
of Health in providing for sanitation and the suppres- 
sion of disease; the protection of life and property; 



136 THE NEW EDUCATION 

the business life of the community — relation of the citi- 
zen to business life, the growth of commerce and indus- 
try in Cincinnati; Cincinnati as a manufacturing 
center, the labor problem, and the regulation of business 
by the government; the necessity for civic beauty; the 
educational forces of the community; the care of de- 
pendents and delinquents ; the functions of government ; 
and the collection and expenditure of city funds. In 
this way the child, before he leaves the elementary 
school, is given an idea of the real meaning of citizen- 
ship. 

Beginning in the kindergarten, the art work extends 
through the high school, including in the lower elemen- 
tary grades, paper-cutting and pasting related to school 
work, the seasons and the holidays. From the third 
grade on, the children make real products — trays, boxes, 
blotter pads, calendars, booklets and folios — work which 
is supplemented by object and constructive drawing and 
designing. 

Shop-work is given to boys, and domestic science to 
girls, in all of the schools. The point at which these 
subjects are introduced and the amount of time devoted 
to them depends upon — what do you think? The regu- 
lations prescribed in the course of study? Not a bit 
of it! It depends upon the needs of the community 
and of the child. 

Schools which are located in the poorer districts begin 
manual training and domestic science with the second 
grade, though ordinarily they are not introduced until 
the sixth. Normally the children are given one and 
one-half or two hours a week of such work, but over-age, 
backward and defective children may spend as much 
as half of their time upon it. For some of the girls a 
five-room flat has been rented, in which they are taught 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 137 

housekeeping in all of its phases. Otherwise the do- 
mestic science consists of hand and machine sewing, the 
designing and making of simple garments, the planning 
and preparation of food, and the organization and care 
of a household. Wherever possible, the boys make use- 
ful products in their shop-work, instead of constructing 
show pieces which have no value. 

From top to bottom the grades are shaped to meet 
the needs of children. Each class and each school is 
built around this central idea. The school system, in- 
stead of taking the usual form of a cumbrous machine, 
is a delicate mechanism adjusted to the wants of Cin- 
cinnati children. 

V Popularizing High School Education 

Not content with making the grades interesting, the 
school authorities of Cincinnati have made the high 
schools so profitable and popular that ninety-five out 
of each one hundred children who complete the eighth 
grade go to the Cincinnati high schools. Furthermore, 
during the past six years the high school attendance 
in Cincinnati has doubled. These two noteworthy con- 
ditions are the product of carefully matured and effi- 
ciently executed plans, and of infinite labor. Yet the 
results have more than repaid the labor which they 
cost. 

"Our first task," explained Dr. E. D. Lyon, princi- 
pal of the Hughes High School, ''was to persuade the 
community that it needed high school training. Next 
we secured two fine new high school buildings. Then 
those of us who are engaged in high school work faced 
the supreme task. We had to prove to the people that 
their expenditures on high schools were worth while, by 



138 THE NEW EDUCATION 

providing a high school education that would mean 
something to the pupils and to the community." Note 
the spirit of social obligation — a feeling prevalent 
throughout the Cincinnati schools. 

''Most parents fail to see the importance of the high 
school problem," said Assistant Superintendent Rob- 
erts, ' ' because they never make consistent efforts to have 
their children choose their vocations intelligently. We 
began our work right there, at the bottom, by telling 
the parents of grade children about the high school 
courses, and what they meant. Eighth grade teachers, 
under the guidance of Mr. F. P. Goodwin, are expected 
to talk to their classes regularly on the vocational op- 
portunities in Cincinnati and elsewhere, and to help 
the children get started right in high school careers. 
Besides that, we take the grade children on trips to the 
high schools, showing them on each trip some striking 
feature of high school work. Parents' meetings are held, 
in which the high schools are explained and discussed, 
and we send circulars to the parents of sixth, seventh 
and eighth grade pupils, explaining the high school work 
as simply as may be." 

After arousing such expectations, the high school can- 
not fulfill its obligations in any way other than by the 
provision of a thorough course of study adapted to the 
needs of all types of pupils. The preparation for this 
in Cincinnati has been made with consummate skill. 
The pupil, on entering the high school, may select any 
one of the nine general courses, in which there are twen- 
ty-three possible combinations of subjects. 

Four of the courses — General, Classical, Domestic Sci- 
ence and Manual Training — prepare for various col- 
leges and technical schools. The other five courses — 
Commercial, Technical Co-operative Course for Boys; 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM I39 

Teclinical Co-operative Course for Girls; Art and 
Music, lead to vocations. Housed in the same high 
school building is this range of work, which permits boys 
and girls to select a course which will bear directly 
on almost any line of work that they may care to fol- 
low in later life. 

Each course is shaped to give the children who se- 
lect it a definite training in the line of their interest. 
The General Course prepares pupils for college ; the Do- 
mestic Science Course shows girls how to make and 
keep a home ; the Commercial Course turns out book- 
keepers; the Technical Co-operative Courses, enabling 
boys and girls to spend part of their time in the school 
and part in the factory, are arranged in co-operation 
with the principal industries of Cincinnati. The Art 
and Music Courses, like the other special work, are in 
the hands of experts who are competent to give a prac- 
tical direction to the activity of their pupils. 

In passing, it is interesting to note that the people 
of Cincinnati are getting the best possible use out of 
their splendid high school equipment. In addition to 
the regular classes which fill the Woodward High School 
from 8 :30 to 3 :00, the pupils in the continuation 
courses occupy the building every afternoon and all 
day Saturday. Five nights a week it is filled by an 
enthusiastic night school, three thousand strong, and 
during six weeks of the summer vacation a summer 
school holds its sessions there. It would be difficult to 
find a school plant which comes nearer to being used 
one hundred per cent of its time. To be sure, such 
things were not done "in father's time," but then the 
people of Cincinnati have a theory that while a good 
thing is worth all it costs, it does not pay to let even 
the best of things decay for lack of use. That is why 



140 THE NEW EDUCATION 

tlie school system tingles from end to end with vigor 
and enthusiasm. 

VI A City University 

Besides the kindergarten, elementary schools, and high 
schools, the city of Cincinnati has a university, which, 
like all of the other educational forces of the city, is 
tied up with the general educational program. Those 
graduates of the Cincinnati high schools who desire 
to go to college, may pass from the high school of Cin- 
cinnati into the University of Cincinnati without a break 
in the continuity of their education. 

The University of Cincinnati is a municipal univer- 
sity. The city appropriates one-half of one mill on the 
general assessment, for university purposes. The board 
of education appropriates ten thousand dollars a year 
toward the maintenance of the Teachers' College, the 
school in which the city teachers are trained. The train- 
ing school for kindergarteners is affiliated with the uni- 
versity, having the same entrance requirements as the 
other university courses. In explanation of this close 
connection between the city and the university, Presi- 
dent Dabney begins his 1911 report to the board of 
directors by saying: "An effort has been made in this 
report to explain the service of the university to the 
city and people of Cincinnati. It is therefore not only 
an official report to the directors, but is also a statement 
for the information of all citizens. ' ' Begun in this 
spirit of public obligation, the report details the services 
of the Teachers' College in supplying teachers; of the 
School of Economics and Political Science in supplying 
municipal experts; and of the Engineering School for 
its inauguration of the widely-known industrial co- 
operative courses — for be it known to the uninitiated 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 141 

that the five hundred students of the University En- 
gineering School spend alternately two weeks in the 
school and two weeks in a shop. More than that, the 
Engineering School furnishes experts for municipal 
engineering work. 

That the students of the University may feel the 
interest of the city in their work, preference is given to 
the University graduates in appointments of teachers, 
of municipal engineers, and of employees on such muni- 
cipal work as testing food, inspecting construction, and 
the like. University students may thus occupy their 
spare time in practical municipal work. 

"The University should lead the progressive thought 
of the community, ' ' says President Dabney, and by way 
of making good his proposition he avails himself of 
every opportunity to turn his students into municipal 
activities, or to co-operate in any way with the forces 
that are making for a greater Cincinnati. 

Vn Special Schools for Special Classes 

There are children in Cincinnati, as in every other 
city, who cannot afford to go to the high school. The 
easiest answer to such children is, "Well, then, don't." 
The fairest answer is a system of schools which will 
enable them to secure an education even though they 
are at work. Cincinnati in selecting the latter course 
has opened a school for the education of eveiy important 
group unable to attend the high schools who wish to 
avail themselves of advanced educational opportunities. 

First there is the night school work, which, in addi- 
tion to the ordinary academic courses, offers special 
opportunities in machine shop practice, blacksmithing, 
mechanical and architectural drawing, and domestic 
science. As these courses are carried forward in the 



142 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Woodward High School building the students have all 
of the advantages of high school equipment. 

Night school, coming after a day's exertion, is so try- 
ing that only the most robust can profit by it. No small 
importance therefore attaches to the operation of the 
compulsory continuation schools under the Ohio law, 
which empowers cities to compel working children be- 
tween fourteen and sixteen years of age to attend school 
for not more than eight hours a week between the hours 
of 8 :00 A. M. and 5 :00 P. M. — hours which will presum- 
ably be subtracted from shop time. By means of this 
adaptation of the German system even those children 
who must leave school at fourteen are guaranteed school 
work for the next two years at least. Although this is 
but a minimum requirement, it represents a beginning 
in the right direction. 

No less significant than this compulsory system are the 
voluntary continuation schools for those over sixteen 
years of age, which have been established for machinists ' 
apprentices, for printers' apprentices, for saleswomen, 
and for housewives. The first two courses are conducted 
under the direction of a genius named Renshaw, who 
takes from the machine shop boys of every age, nation- 
ality and experience, fits them somewhere into his four- 
year course; gives them a numbered time check from 
his. time board; teaches them reading, writing, arith- 
metic, mechanical drawing, geometry, algebra and 
trigonometry by means of an ingenious series of blue- 
prints, which constitute their sole text-book ; visits them 
in their shops, giving suggestions and advice about the 
shop work, and finally sends them out finished crafts- 
men, with an excellent foundation in the theoretical side 
of the trades. The work is entirely voluntary, yet so 
excellent is it that a number of Cincinnati manufac- 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 143 

tnrers send their apprentices to Mr. Renshaw, paying 
them regular wages for the four hours of credit which 
the said Renshaw registers weekly on the boys' time- 
cards. "One firm sends sixty boys here each week," 
commented Mr. Renshaw 's assistant. ''That makes two 
hundred and forty hours of school work each week for 
which they pay regular wages. Well, sir, the superin- 
tendent there told me that they didn 't so much as notice 
the loss." 

' ' I tried to explain my system to one superintendent, ' ' 
said Mr. Renshaw, "but he wouldn't even listen. 'It 
makes no difference how you do it,' he grumbled, 'I 
don't care about that. I know that the boys are neater, 
more careful, more accurate, and better all-around work- 
men after they have been with you for a while. That's 
enough explanation for me.' " 

Acting on such sentiments the manufacturer per- 
emptorily dismisses the boy who does not do his school 
tasks satisfactorily. The responsibility is in the school, 
whose growing enrollment and influence tell their own 
story. Firms send their boys to the school with the 
comment that the hours of school time, for which they 
are paid, do not add to the cost of shop management, 
but do add to the value of the boys to the shop. In- 
creased efficiency pays. 

A school of salesmanship for women has met with a 
like success. The leading stores, glad of an opportunity 
to raise the standard of their employees, grant the sales- 
women a half day each week, without loss of pay, dur- 
ing which they take the salesmanship course. The course 
has the hearty backing of the best Cincinnati merchants, 
who see in it an opportunity, as Mr. Dyer put it, "to 
make their employees the most skilled and intelligent, 
the most obliging and trustworthy, the best treated and 



144 THE NEW EDUCATION 

best paid — in short, the very best type of saleswomen in 
the country." 

That this work may keep pace with the demand for 
it the school authorities offer industrial instruction in 
any pursuit for which a class of twenty-five can be 
organized. 

' ' A large number of women were born too soon to get 
the advantage of the courses in domestic science now 
being offered in our high schools," comments Mr. Dyer 
in his dry way. Scores of such women anxious to learn 
all that was known about domestic arts constituted a 
class for which the school was well equipped to provide. 
''Then suppose we give them what they need," said 
Mr. Dyer. Just fancy — a continuous course in domestic 
science ! Yet there it is, in Cincinnati, with an enroll- 
ment of more than eleven hundred women, attending the 
public schools to learn domestic arts. What could be 
more rational than this Cincinnati system of making a 
school — even though it be a continuation school — to fit 
the educational needs of Cincinnati people — grown-ups 
and children alike? 

VIII Special Schools for Special Children 

The Cincinnati schools provide for special children as 
well as for special classes of people. First there are the 
unusually bright children, who ''mark-time" in the 
ordinary classes. These children were placed in ' ' rapidly 
moving classes." While omitting none of the work, 
they were allowed to go as fast as their mental develop- 
ment would allow them, instead of as slowly as the other 
members of the class made it necessary to move. At 
the beginning the teacher found these exceptionally able 
children lacking in effort and attention, qualities which 
they had not needed to keep their place in the grades. 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 145 

"The extra work and responsibility stimulated their 
mental activity, increased their power of attention, fos- 
tered thoroughness and accuracy, developed resource- 
fulness and initiative, and those other qualities neces- 
sary for leadership." Why should it not be so? Why 
should not the specially able child be taught as thor- 
oughly as the defective one? Yet Mr. Dyer, speaking 
from experience, remarks : ' ' Strange to say, it is harder 
to establish such classes than defective and retarded 
ones." Strange indeed! 

For the sub-normal or retarded children Cincinnati 
has made ample provision. Spending from a quarter to 
a half of their time in manual Avork, the children are no 
longer tortured with the doing of things beyond their 
powers. The overgrown boys have instruction in shop 
work. The overgrown girls have a furnished flat in 
which they learn the arts of home-making at first hand. 
There are in all over four hundred children in these 
schools. 

Similar accommodations are provided for other spe- 
cial groups. The anaemic and tubercular children are 
taught in two open-air schools ; six teachers are detailed 
to instruct the deaf children ; one teacher devotes her 
time to the blind children, and ten teachers are em- 
ployed to take charge of those children who are men- 
tally defective. Thus, by adjusting the schools to the 
needs of special groups of people, and of special indi- 
viduals, Cincinnati is providing an education which 
reaches the individual members of the community. 

IX Playground and Summer Schools 

The vacation school is planned to meet the needs of 
the children in the crowded districts during the hot 
summer months. "For that reason," says Mr. Dyer, 



146 THE NEW EDUCATION 

''it provides industrial work of all kinds unassociated 
with book instruction, but mingled with a great amount 
of recreational activity — excursions, stories, folk-danc- 
ing, and a wide variety of games." 

The field of industrial activity is a broad one, includ- 
ing cooking, nursing, housekeeping, sewing, knitting, 
crocheting, weaving and basketry; drawing and color 
work, brush and plastic work; bench work with tools, 
making useful articles; sports and games, including 
folk-dancing for girls and ball for boys. The primary 
and kindergarten classes offer a delightful round of 
song, story, games, excursions, paper work and other 
forms of construction. For the girls who have to take 
care of babies there are special classes. The boys make 
useful articles in the shops, and the girls, in sewing- 
room and cooking laboratory, learn to do the things 
around which the interests of the home always center. 
By co-operation with the park commissioners, the play- 
grounds were made an integral part of the summer 
school work. 

Besides the recreational summer school Cincinnati has 
maintained for the past five years an academic summer 
school, in which children might make up back work 
in school, or do special work in any line which was of 
particular interest to them. In these schools "the 
very best instructors that can be secured" are em- 
ployed, and their recommendations are accepted by the 
school principals when the fall term opens. ''This 
school is one of the means taken to deal with the problem 
of repeaters in our schools," says Mr. Dyer. "Instead 
of requiring children who are behind to fall back a 
year, they may, if they are not hopeless failures, but 
only deficient in a few studies, remove their deficiencies 
in the summer school and go on with their class. We 



A GEEAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 147 

have followed up these pupils," Mr. Dyer adds, "and 
found that a normal percentage keep up with the class 
in succeeding years." 

X Mr. Dyer and the Men Who Stood With Him 

A spirit of comradeship and hearty co-operation 
breathes from every nook and cranny of the Cincinnati 
schools. Principals and teachers alike sense the fact. 
Alike they aim toward the upbuilding of the schools. 

"Never in my life have I found such a spirit of 
mutual helpfulness," says Assistant Superintendent 
Roberts. "Every teacher has felt that she had a part 
to play, that she counted, that her suggestions were 
worth while, and she has worked earnestly toward this 
end. ' ' 

"Everywhere I encounter the same willingness to co- 
operate with the schools," said Superintendent Condon, 
after spending three months in the place that Mr. Dyer 
vacated when he became superintendent of the Boston 
schools. "There is a heartiness in it, too, that grips 
a man." 

"There is always the j oiliest good-fellowship in the 
Schoolman's Club," exclaimed a grammar school prin- 
cipal. "It's always 'Roberts' and 'Lyon' and 'Dyer' 
there. They're as good as the rest, no better. We all 
go there to work, and to work hard for the schools." 

On such a spirit is the school system of Cincinnati 
founded. From its point of vantage, set upon its high 
hill of ministry to child needs, it flashes like a search- 
light through the storm of nineteenth century pedagog- 
ical obscurity. The optimist sings a new, glad song; 
the pessimist is confounded; the searcher after educa- 
tional truth uncovers reverently before this masterpiece 
of educational organization, this practical demonstra- 



148 THE NEW EDUCATION 

tion of the wonders that may be accomplished where 
head and heart work together through the schools, for 
the children. 

Such is the triumph, but whose the glory ? 

"It is not mine/' protests Mr. Dyer, ''I did only my 
part." "Nor mine," "Nor mine," echo his assistants. 
Truly, wisely, bravely spoken. The glory is not to Mr. 
Dyer, nor to any other one man or woman — the glory- 
is to Mr. Dyer and the men and women who worked with 
him for the Cincinnati schools. 

"My predecessor was an able organizer," explained 
Mr. Dyer. "He left things in splendid condition, and 
we took up his work. There were five things which 
marked great epochs in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati 
schools : 

"First, we established the merit system for the ap- 
pointment of teachers. 

' ' Second, we improved the school buildings and equip- 
ment. 

t i TJiir^^ ^e organized special courses for children who 
were not able to profit by the regular work. 

"Fourth, by putting applied work in the grades we 
gave the children a chance to use their hands as well 
as their heads. 

"Fifth, we enlarged the school system by adding 
buildings and courses until there was a place in the 
schools for every boy and girl, man and woman in Cin- 
cinnati who wanted an education. 

"That was the sum total of our work. It was a long 
and difficult task." Mr. Dyer's tall form straightened 
a trifle. His earnest, determined face relaxed. From 
under his bushy eyebrows flashed a gleam of triumph — 
the triumph of a strong, purposeful, successful man. 
"But when it was all over," he concluded, "and when 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM I49 

the things for which we had striven were accomplished 
we knew that they were worth while." 

When Mr. Dyer left his position in Cincinnati to 
become Superintendent of the Boston schools, there was, 
on every hand, a feeling of loss and of uncertainty among 
those most interested in the city's educational problems. 
During those months which elapsed between Mr. Dyer's 
departure for Boston and the election of his successor 
there was a feeling that, after all, perhaps he was not 
replaceable. 

Then the successor came, — a quiet man, with a con- 
structive imagination that enabled him to grasp, readily 
and completely, Cincinnati's educational need. There 
had been an era of radical educational adjustment in 
the city. The school system had been changed, — art- 
fully changed, it is true — but changed, nevertheless, in 
all of the essential elements of its being. Some of the 
changes had been made with such rapidity that their 
foundations had not been fully completed. The bril- 
liant school policy which Mr. Dyer had inaugurated 
needed rounding out for fulfilment and completion. 
Randall J. Condon saw these things; and he saw, fur- 
thermore, that in a community so awakened as Cincin- 
nati, almost any educational program was feasible, so 
long as it remained reasonable. 

The Cincinnati school people who went to Providence 
for the purpose of inviting Mr. Condon to take charge 
of the Cincinnati schools, felt the constructive power 
of his leadership. Providence had been educationally 
transformed, and Mr. Condon was the man responsible 
for the transformation. 

The people of Cincinnati have every cause to congratu- 
late themselves upon the new school head. At the outset 
Mr. Condon said, — ' ' I purpose, to the best of my ability. 



150 THE NEW EDUCATION 

to live up to and follow out the policies inaugurated by 
Mr. Dyer." With the utmost fidelity he has kept his 
word. 

There is far more in Mr. Condon's administration than 
a mere follow-up policy. Everywhere he is building. 
In the face of a difficult financial situation which com- 
pels a serious curtailment of expenses for the time being, 
he is insisting upon additional kindergartens, extended 
high school accommodations, a more intimate correla- 
tion of the elementary and high school system, and an 
extensive system of recreation and social centers. It 
is upon the latter point that Mr. Condon is laying the 
greatest emphasis at the outset of his administration. 

The Cincinnati policy which Mr. Condon has inaugu- 
rated with regard to civic centers is admirably summed 
up in his statement of the case. ^'A larger use of the 
school house for social, recreational and civic purposes 
should be encouraged. The school house belongs to all 
of the people, and should be open to all the people upon 
equal terms, — as civic centers for the free discussion of 
all matters relating to local and city government, and 
for the non-partisan consideration of all civic questions ; 
as recreational centers, especially for the younger mem- 
bers of the community, to include the use of the baths 
and gymnasiums for games and sports, and other 
physical recreations, the use of class-rooms and halls for 
music, dramatics, and other recreational activities, and 
for more distinct social purposes ; as educational centers 
in which the more specific educational facilities and 
equipment may be used by classes or groups of younger 
or older people, in any direction which makes for in- 
creased intelligence, and for greater economic and edu- 
cational efficiency; as social centers in which the com- 
munity may undertake a larger social service in behalf 



A GREAT CITY SCHOOL SYSTEM 151 

of its members, — stations from which groups and organ- 
izations of social workers may prosecute any non-partisan 
and non-sectarian work for the improvement of the 
social and economic conditions of the neighborhood, ren- 
dering any service which may help to improve the con- 
dition of the homes, giving assistance to the needy, dis- 
seminating information, helping to employment, and in 
general affording the community in its organized 
capacity an opportunity to serve in a larger measure the 
needs of the individual members." Here is, indeed, a 
broad-gauge social school policy, to which the adminis- 
trative authorities of the Cincinnati schools are fully 
committed. 

The movement for social centers in the schools is to 
be under the direction of a social secretary appointed 
by the superintendent. Until the organization is more 
highly perfected, principals are free, under certain re- 
strictions, to open their schools for classes, groups, and 
all other legitimate community activities. 

Mr. Condon's activities in the direction of socialized 
school buildings finds a ready response. "There was 
already a large use of a number of the schools for 
community meetings — for welfare associations, for boys' 
and girls ' study clubs, and for musical and social gather- 
ings." The program is a program of extension, rather 
than of innovation. It has already won the approval of 
the citizenship. 

Spontaneity must be the soul of such a movement. 
"It was my strong conviction that the development of 
such a social movement should come from the people 
themselves, not that a ready-made program or plan 
should be given them, but that they should develop their 
own." One by one centers are being formed. The Board 
of Education furnishes the building, the local social 



152 THE NEW EDUCATION 

center organization pays the immediate expenses which 
its activities incur. The movement has been started 
right. "I am a great believer in democracy," Mr. 
Condon says. "The people can be trusted to settle 
social questions as they should be settled, provided all 
sides can be fully presented and time taken for delibera- 
tion. The school house affords the one opportunity 
where all can meet on common ground as American citi- 
zens and as good neighbors, where the question of wealth 
and position may be forgotten, and where what a man 
is in himself, and what he is willing to do for the 
common good, counts most." 

Such is the spirit in which Mr. Dyer, the men and 
women who worked with him, and the men and women 
who succeeded him, have striven for the advancement of 
education; such the spirit of co-operation and progres- 
siveism which dominates this great city school system. 



CHAPTEE VIII 
THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 

I An Experimeut in Social Education 

On the west side of Cincinnati, separated from the 
main part of the town by railroad yards, waste land 
and stagnant water, surrounded by factories and a 
myriad of little homes, stands the Oyler School. ''Can 
any good thing come out of Nazareth?" queried a 
doubter. Answers, in bell tones, the philosopher, "If 
a man can build a better house or make a better mouse- 
trap than his neighbor, though he fix his home in the 
woods, the world w411 find a path to his door. ' ' Because 
Oyler has built a better school in a better community 
the world sits at Oyler 's feet to learn of its experiment 
in social education. 

The first time that I went to the Oyler School I en- 
countered a Committee of Manufacturers. A Committee 
of Manufacturers in a public school during business 
hours ! These men had met to talk with the school prin- 
cipal over the location of a library, which the entire 
community had worked to secure. When the time came 
to go before the Park Board over in the center of the 
city, to secure a playground near the Oyler School, the 
local bank furnished automobiles, and dozens of business 
men, leaving their offices, took the opportunity to endorse 
the work of the school, and to second its demands that 
play space be given to West End children. The manu- 
facturers have become interested because in less than a 
decade the Oyler School has changed the face of the 

153 



154 THE NEW EDUCATION 

community, creating harmony out of discord, and order 
out of chaos. 

The struggle of Oyler is the story of a man, a deliv- 
ered message, a thriving, enthusiastic school and a re- 
born neighborhood. Many years ago — about twenty to 
be exact — a young man named Voorhes was made first 
assistant in a West End school. Like other young men 
who go into school work he applied himself earnestly to 
his tasks, but unlike most of them he did some hard think- 
ing at the same time. Among other things he thought 
about the relation between the school and the community, 
wondering why the two were so completely divorced from 
one another. Then the problem was focused on one con- 
crete example — a boy named John, nearly sixteen years 
old, who had succeeded in getting only as far as the 
eighth grade. John, who had never taken kindly to 
language or grammar, began thinking pretty seriously 
toward the end of his last year in the grammar school. 
He tried, he struggled, but the syntax was too much for 
him. After all, it was not his fault, and he complained 
bitterly against a punishment in the form of "leav- 
ing down" for something which he could not help. His 
training was so inadequate that he was entirely unable 
to pass the high school examinations which, in those 
days, were like the laws of the Medes and the Persians. 

' ' I am safe in saying that he did not know the differ- 
ence between a verb and a preposition," said Mr. Voor- 
hes, "but during the grammar lesson he could make 
a drawing of the face of the teacher that was in no sense 
a caricature. This phase of his ability gave me a cue 
to what might be done for him. Knowing both the 
superintendent and the principal of the Technical 
School, I talked the situation over with them, begging 
them, with all the persuasive power at my command, to 



THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 155 

take the boy, forgetting his shortcomings, and magnify- 
ing his peculiar talents, which I felt sure were con- 
siderable along mechanical lines. They acceded to my 
request, giving John a place in the school, to which he 
walked three miles back and forth daily for three years. 
For many years John has been superintendent of the 
lighting plant of a large city, and his experience has 
always stood out before me as a terrible rebuke to the 
then dominant educational regime, which could offer 
John nothing but a sneer. These facts took such a vital 
hold on me, seeming to reinforce so fully the thought 
that the industrial abilities which I had acquired back on 
the farm proved of incalculable value to me, that the 
resolution to promote industrial education became a fixed 
part of my educational creed. The memory of that lesson 
in educational equity kept the need for industrial train- 
ing constantly in my mind, till I had opportunity to give 
it expression in the Oyler School." 

John bespoke the needs of the community by which 
Oyler was surrounded. It was so different from other 
communities. There were the ugly straggling factory 
buildings, the miserable homes, their squalid tenants, 
and worst of all there were the rough, boisterous, over- 
age, uninterested, incorrigible boys and girls, who flitted 
from school to home, to street, to jail, and then, gripped 
by the infirm hand of the law, in the form of a Juvenile 
Court probation officer, or a truant officer, they came 
back to school unwillingly enough to begin the cycle all 
over again. 

''As for discipline," remarked one of the city school 
officials, ''the school hadn't known it for years, the pro- 
bation officer couldn't keep the children in school and 
the Juvenile Court couldn't keep them out of jail. 
Even the majesty of the law is lost on children, you 



156 THE NEW EDUCATION 

know." The children taunted the police; the police 
hated the children; the home repelled; the factory 
called, grimly; child labor flourished, and the school 
despaired. 

II An Appeal for Applied Education 

Such were the conditions when Mr. Voorhes became 
school principal. Grinding factories, wretched homes, 
parental ignorance, social neglect, educational impotence 
— few men could enter such a field of battle with a liglit 
heart, but Mr. Voorhes did. 

What, think you, was his first move? He addressed 
to the heads of all of the factories in the neighborhood a 
letter, suggesting the establishment of a manual train- 
ing department in connection with the grade work of 
the Oyler School. ^ ' As I become more and more familiar 
with existing conditions in our school district," he 
wrote, ''I am convinced that a Manual Training De- 
partment would be of vital importance to the school 
and to the general welfare of the community. Such 
departments are being looked upon to-day as necessary 
adjuncts to modern school equipment. 

''Our school is being drained constantly of its life 
force by the adjacent factory demands, and if we could 
send pupils forth with trained hands as well as trained 
minds they could render a much more useful service, 
which, in time, would not only show itself in more profit- 
able returns to employers, but must also tend toward a 
higher standard of culture in the neighborhood, and a 
longer continuance in school by our pupils. 

"I know of no other section of the city where the 
actual need should make a stronger appeal for support 
than here. Anything you may do will be greatly appre- 
ciated, " 



THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 157 

''You can imagine my surprise," says Mr. Voorhes, 
''when during the next few days my mail brought me a 
hearty response of checks and pledges amounting to 
nearly a thousand dollars.'' Manual training was as- 
sured ! No ! Not yet. The Board of Education reached 
the conclusion that manual training in the grades was 
undesirable. "With the exception of $85 which I was 
told to use as I saw fit the checks and pledges were alike 
returned to the donors. That $85 gave a piano to our 
kindergarten. ' ' 

That failure back in 1903 was the seed-ground of later 
success. The community was interested to the extent 
of a thousand dollars at least. The manufacturers were 
not only interested in education, but were willing to 
support it financially* There was a change of admin- 
istration. Mr. F. B. Dyer became Superintendent of 
Schools and at once met the situation by establishing a 
manual training center in the Oyler School. 

Ill Solving a Local Problem 

The end was not yet, however. The truant officers 
and the Juvenile Court were still busy keeping Oyler 
children out of mischief and in school. The conventional 
type of manual training — one period per week in the 
sixth, seventh and eighth grades — was not holding the 
pupils. 

"The children were not getting enough manual work 
to establish either habit or efficiency," Mr. Voorhes 
comments, ' ' besides, this work reached only to the sixth 
grade. At this time there were in the school fifty boys 
and girls below the fifth grade who were from two to 
five years behind their normal classes. That is to say, 
they were — most of them — of that unfortunate class 
that has seen more trouble in a few years than most of 



158 THE NEW EDUCATION 

"US see in a lifetime. I was constantly asking myself: 
^ Where do these folks come in?' 'What is our school 
doing to help their function in life?' 'Are we really 
of any assistance to them after all ? ' 'Is it worth their 
while to come to our school?' My sympathy for the 
pupils was constantly growing, and I went at last in 
desperation to the superintendent with a plan for a 
revolution in the organization of my school, a revolu- 
tion that I was sure would meet the needs of the com- 
munity and one upon which I was willing to stake my 
reputation if I had any." 

At this point it is worth remembering, parenthetically, 
that Cincinnati school men have a habit of going about 
their school problems in very much that spirit, begin- 
ning by sizing up the needs of the community, continu- 
ing by becoming imbued with an idea of the community 
needs and ending by presenting this idea to the school 
authorities and getting — within bounds — carte blanche 
to make their schools serve the locality in which they 
are situated. 

This was Mr. Voorhes's experience. He was told to 
go ahead and make good — a permission of which he 
availed himself in an astoundingly short space of time 
by introducing a system of applied education, aimed to 
meet the needs of the children who attended the Oyler 
School. 

' ' There is a peculiar situation, ' ' said Mr. Dyer, ' ' and 
it needs peculiar handling. You have only one problem 
to solve — that of the west end. Go ahead!" Mr. Voor- 
hes did go ahead with a plan under which all children 
in the sixth and seventh grades were given three periods 
a week in laboratories and shops. Subnormal pupils 
in the third, fourth and fifth grades were to have four 
and one-half hours (one school day) for applied work 



THE OYLEE SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI I59 

each week. In order to give special help to backward 
pupils they were sent in small groups to the seventh and 
eighth grade teachers while their classes were doing 
applied work. Below-grade children go to the eighth 
grade teacher for special work in arithmetic and 
geography, and the seventh grade teacher for English 
and history. In this way the backward children from 
the lower grades have special training by the best 
equipped teachers in the school. 

The eighth grade pupils give one-fifth of their time 
to applied work. During the year the boys have, in 
addition to the shop-work, twenty lessons in preparing 
and cooking plain, substantial meals. To make this 
"siss" work palatable to the sterner sex much of it 
takes the form of instruction in camp life — cooking in 
tin cans and other handy home-made devices. In a com- 
munity where boys have always been trained to regard 
home work as menial, but where the absence of servants 
makes a ' ' lift ' ' from the husband or brother such a God- 
send to the wife at odd times, the value of giving grade 
boys a taste for cooking can hardly be over-estimated. 

The boys also receive twenty lessons in the simpler 
forms of sewing — darning, hemming, sewing on buttons. 
At the same time the girls are taught the use of simple 
tools. 

IV Domestic Science Which Domesticates 

Beginning with the second grade the girls have 
domestic science while the boys are at manual training. 
This domestic science has a truer ring to it than most 
of the teaching which passes under that name. The 
children at Oyler have a peculiar need for domestic 
science, because in many of the homes mother works out, 
and even when she is not away her knowledge of do- 



160 THE NEW EDUCATION 

mestic arts is so rudimentary that she can impart little 
to her daughters. So it comes about that the Oyler 
School seeks to teach the girls all that they would have 
under intelligent direction in a normal home. 

Once each week they cook and once they sew, devoting 
from one-eighth to one-fifth of their entire time to these 
activities. By way of preparation for both cooking and 
sewing they are carefully trained in buying. They must 
make the dollar go a long way — buying in season the 
things cheapest at that time and preparing them in a 
way to yield the maximum of return. For example, 
they are called upon in January to buy a 50 cent dinner 
for six persons. Laura Wickersham's cost list is : 

Soup meat $0.20 

Can of tomatoes 10 

Spaghetti 05 

Cheese 05 

Bread 05 

Butter, etc 08 



$0.53 

Gus Potts, a mere boy, makes this suggestion : 

Meat "^ $0.20 

Potatoes 05 

Cabbage 05 

Bread 05 

Milk 04 

Butter 05 

Coffee 05 

$0.49 



THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 161 

In their cooking laboratory they learn to cook simple 
foods, one thing at a time, until they reach the upper 
grades, where they must prepare entire meals on limited 
allowances. 

The sewing is equally practical. The girls learn to 
patch, darn, hem and make underclothing and dresses. 
•Then, going into homes where no intelligent needlework 
has ever been done — where frequently a darning needle 
is unknown — they teach the mother and older sisters 
how to sew, until whole families, under the influence 
of one school child, improve their wardrobe and reduce 
their cost for clothing. Certain sewing days in school, 
called darning days, are sacred to the renovation of 
worn-out garments which the girls bring from home. 

The Oyler system may not turn out artists in dress 
design — it has no such aim. The children who come 
to its class-rooms are ignorant of the simplest devices 
known to civilization for the making of comfortable 
homes. The domestic science courses are organized to 
take care of their children by teaching them to be intel- 
ligent home-makers. 

V Making Commercial Products in fbse Grades 

No less practical is the work of the boys in the shops, 
since the great majority of them will enter factories. 
The shop-work is designed to familiarize them with the 
ideas underlying shop practice. Instead of making use- 
less joints and surfaces the boys turn out finished, mar- 
ketable products. The eighth grade boys, with the aid 
of the instructor, have built a drill-press from the scraps 
of machinery which were found lying about. Now they 
are at work on an engine. Elaborate products you will 
say, for eighth grade boys, yet these boys are likely 
interested, they do their task with zest, and linger about 



162 THE NEW EDUCATION 

the shop after school hours are over — anxious to com- 
plete the jobs which the day's work has begun. 

Boys in grades two to six made three dozen hammer 
handles for use in the high school machine shops. Of 
forty-two pieces of rough stock there were produced 
thirty-six handles, a record which some commercial shops 
might envy. These same boys made a book and maga- 
zine rack, of rather elaborate design, and an umbrella 
rack for each of the schools in Cincinnati. These racks, 
displayed in the offices of the various principals, would 
stand comparison with a high grade factory product. 
The boys are now engaged in making a desk book-rack 
(a scroll saw exercise) for every school teacher in Cin- 
cinnati. When they have finished there will be more 
than a thousand. 

Besides these routine *class exercises the Oyler boys 
are privileged to make anything which appeals to them 
and for which they can supply the material. The school 
machines are theirs, subject to their use at any time. 
Taking advantage of this, the boys sharpen the home 
knives and hatchets, make axe handles, umbrella racks, 
hall stands, stools, sleds, cane chairs, and repair or make 
any product which fancy or home necessity may dictate. 

VI A Beal Interest in School 

Let no one infer that the academic branches are 
neglected at Oyler. Far from it, they are taught with 
consummate skill by a corps of teachers who enjoy the 
work because they find the children interested. Strange 
to relate, an interest in school came in at the front door 
with Mr. Voorhes' new plan for applied education. The 
wild boys and dishevelled girls of the West End, who 
had erstwhile hated school, came now to participate in 



^ THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 163 

school activities with an interest seldom surpassed in 
public or private schools. 

' ' You see, ' ' Mr. Voorhes remarked, ' ' a day a week in 
the shop or laboratories is just about enough to keep 
down the high spirits of the older ones, and at the same 
time give them an applied education of which they feel 
the value. That one day of practical work did the trick. 
It made the other four days of academic work taste just 
as good as pie." 

Mr. Voorhes' plan arrived. It won the interest of 
the children and later with the assistance of the Mothers ' 
Club and the kindergarten it won the sympathy of the 

community. 

Vn The Mothers' Club 

Like all of the other school centers in Cincinnati, 
Oyler has a kindergarten and a Mothers' Club, around 
which the change in community feeling has centered, 
until Mr. Voorhes describes them as "the most impor- 
tant influence that ever came into our school. ' ' Yet the 
kindergarten here, as elsewhere, has had a life and death 
grapple for existence. In the West End, dominated by 
its conservative, German atmosphere, the pleas for kin- 
dergartens fell on deaf ears. At last, after much prep- 
aration, a meeting of mothers and children was held for 
the purpose of forming an organization ; at the meeting 
there were thirteen children and five mothers, and all 
antagonistic, or at best suspicious. 

"I went around and played with every one of those 
children," said Mr. Voorhes, "talking to the mothers, 
and trying to persuade them that this was not failure, 
but merely the forerunner of success. The next day 
I went into every grade, saying to the children : 

" 'What was the matter? Mother did not come to the 
Mothers' Meeting yesterday.' 



164 THE NEW EDUCATION 

*' *0h, she couldn't leave the baby.' 

" 'Leave the baby! Why, of course not. No one ex- 
pected her to leave the baby. Tell her to come and 
bring the baby along.' " 

So another meeting was held, and another to which 
the babies were brought — some women bringing as many 
as three, who were too young to go to school. At one 
Mothers' Meeting, after the club had been well organ- 
ized, there were twenty women, listening, discussing and 
nursing babies, all at once. 

If the beginnings of the experiment were discourag- 
ing the results have more than offset the original disap- 
pointment. At the last meeting (in January) seventy 
of the eighty-five paid up members were present, intelli- 
gent, eager, interested, participating heartily in the dis- 
cussions. It has cost years of labor, but these mothers 
have reached the point where they can talk intelligently 
about the children and their needs. 

''Only yesterday," said Miss Phelps, Kindergarten 
Director, ' ' one mother said to me : ' I used to be the 
most impatient woman with my children — I simply 
couldn't stand it when they refused to do what I told 
them. The other day my mother said to me, "You're 
about the most patient woman I ever saw. What's done 
it?" And I said to her : "Well, mother, I do not know 
of anything except those folks at the kindergarten, 
which all helped me to look at children in a very dif- 
ferent way." ' " 

Through the Mothers ' Meetings the mothers have come 
to feel that they are co-operating with the teacher and 
the school. Those mothers who have children in the 
upper grades as well as in the kindergarten go to the 
grade teachers too, seeking advice, or making sugges- 
tions. They have learned to feel that they are an essen- 



THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 165 

tial part of the educational plan, and their enthusiastic 
interest tells of the advantages gained by this co-opera- 
tion. 

The Oyler Mothers' Club has been the center of the 
movement to clear up the community. Through them 
and through the grades refuse has been cleaned and kept 
from the streets. The club maintains, out of its fund, a 
medicine chest at the school, which is used by the visit- 
ing nurse. It has cleaned up the children, and that is 
no small item. 

''Back in 1904," says Mr. Voorhes, ''I had ^Ye hun- 
dred of the children vaccinated in my office, and such 
dirt and vermin I never saw! Nearly every child had 
the high water mark on his wrist, and their clothes and 
bodies were filthy. They didn't know a bathtub from 
a horse trough ; they don 't now for the matter of that, 
because there are scarcely a dozen houses in this section 
that have bathtubs, but the children are clean.'* 

Each year the old members of the Mothers' Club 
bring in the new mothers, saying to Miss Phelps : ' ' This 
is my mother, I brought her," ''This is mine!" with a 
delighted satisfaction in having added something to the 
club. The kindergarten, filling two rooms, is thriving, 
and the kindergarten teachers, visiting and advising in 
the home, are cordially welcomed everywhere. 

Vm The Disappearance of "Discipline'* 

"Discipline," smiled Mr. Voorhes, "no, we don't 
mention the word any more. Five years ago the dis- 
cipline problem in this school was more serious than in 
any school in town. We couldn't handle it, not even 
with a club. To-day the discipline looks after itself." 

The disciplining of an undisciplined school may sound 
like an immensely difficult task. Wrongly essayed it 



166 THE NEW EDUCATION 

would be. Rightly directed it becomes the merest child's 
play. The teachers have disciplined the school — dis- 
ciplined it through kindness — and here, again, the in- 
spiration may be traced to the Mothers' Club and the 
kindergarten, for it was in the kindergarten that the 
first real attempt was made to bring this school into 
closer relations with the home by home visiting. Little 
by little the example told on the grade teachers, who 
went to see the children when they were absent ; nor was 
it long before a custom grew up in the school, by virtue 
of which a teacher who wished to visit one absent child, 
might pick her own time to make her visit. If per- 
chance the psychological moment was during school 
hours, she went then, while another teacher or the prin- 
cipal took her place. 

Among the many illustrations of the efficiency of this 
system one stands out strongly. A boy had been away 
for a week, sick with rheumatism, when his teacher de- 
cided to call and see him. She went hesitatingly, how- 
ever, for this boy had been rough and troublesome all 
through school, but particularly to her. At last her 
mind was made up. She visited the boy and came away 
radiant, overjoyed at the cordial reception he had given 
her. Again she went, and the mother, opening the door 
with a glad face, said: 

''Come right in, Tom's been looking for you." 

*'Is he better?" the teacher asked. 

"Yes, pretty much, but he said that he would get well 
right quick when you came to see him again." 

Does anyone wonder that the boy should feel so 
kindly over attentions to which he was not accustomed ? 
Is it strange that he should have come back to school 
;with a firm resolve to be decent to his teacher? 

Discipline? There is no longer a problem of dis- 



THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 167 

cipline. The teachers are enthusiastic over the work, 
because they can see its results in the changed homes 
and lives about them. The children engaged in occupa- 
tions which they enjoy and sensing the efforts of the 
school in their behalf, discipline themselves by being 
frank and hearty in work or in play. 

Mr. Voorhes is not surprised at this transformation. 
The plan on which he staked his reputation was a 
simple one, based on the idea of serving a community 
which he had studied carefully, by providing for it an 
education that met its needs. Though revolutionary 
from an educational viewpoint, the plan succeeded be- 
cause it was socially sound — ^because it linked together 
the school and the community, of which the school is a 

logical part. 

IX The Spirit of Oyler 

Oyler has a motto,. a very shibboleth, ''The school for 
the community and the community for the school. ' ' Not 
only do its principal and teachers believe that the school 
must center its activities about the needs of the com- 
munity in which it is located, but they put their belief 
into practice, studying the community diligently and 
seeking to find an answer for every need which it mani- 
fests. Out of this spirit of service has grown up a 
warmth of feeling and interest among the teachers sel- 
dom surpassed anywhere. 

"When I came to Oyler I felt about it as Sherman 
felt about war," says Mr. Voorhes. "Now I would not 
trade places with any school man in Cincinnati. The 
teachers feel the same way. Never yet have we had a 
teacher who wanted to leave. Each one has her class, 
that is enough. We have no problem of discipline now. 
The children and their parents are working for the 
school. 



168 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Sometimes people get the idea that Mr. Voorhes does 
not do very much. One visitor spent half a day observ- 
ing, and then sitting down in his office she said : 

*'Mr. Voorhes, I have been here half a day and I 
haven't seen you around at all. What do you do?" 

"Madam," answered Mr. Voorhes, *'I am a man of 
leisure. All I do is to sit here at this desk, ready to get 
behind any one of my teachers, with two hundred and 
fifty pounds from the shoulder, in order to prevent any- 
body or anything from getting in the way of her work. ' ' 

Small wonder that the teachers like to stay. Small 
wonder that the work which the school does commands 
the respect of the people of Cincinnati. In the school, 
as well as in the neighborhood, each person has a task 
and a fair chance to do it well. 

From its position as "the worst school in Cincinnati" 
Oyler has risen, first in its own esteem, and then in the 
esteem of the city, until it is looked upon everywhere 
as a factor in the life of the west end, and an invaluable 
cog in the educational machinery of the city. Its tone 
has changed, too. Mr. Roberts, who came, a total 
stranger, to assist in the work while Mr. Voorhes was 
sick, says, ' ' I have never heard a word of discourtesy or 
a bit of rudeness since I came to this school." That is 
strong testimony for a new man in a new place. Splen- 
didly done, Oyler! 

Mr. Voorhes has not stopped working. On the con- 
trary, he is at it harder than ever, shaping his school to 
the ever-changing community needs. He has stopped 
disciplining, though, and he has stopped wondering 
about the success of his experiment. Time was when 
Oyler looked upon high school attendance much as a 
New York gunman looks at Sunday School. Last 
year of the thirty-three children in the eighth grade, 



THE OYLEB SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI 169 

eighteen — more than half — went to high school. The 
tradition against high school has been replaced by a 
healthy desire for more education. "One day a week 
in the shops," Mr. Voorhes says, "means interest and 
enthusiasm. Our children compete in high school with 
the children of grammar schools from the well-to-do 
sections, and with the best our boys and girls hold their 
own." 

The community is interested. Parents and manufac- 
turers alike come to the school, consult, advise, suggest, 
co-operate. The school boy is no longer sneered at by 
"the gang." The school has made its place in the com- 
munity, and "the gang" is enthusiastically engaged in 
school work. The complexion of the neighborhood has 
changed, too. It is less rough, the police have less to 
do. Houses are neater, children better clothed and cared 
for. Oyler has won the hearts of its people, improved 
the food on their tables and the clothes on their backs, 
sent the children to high school, and their mothers to 
Mothers' Clubs; and the people who once uttered their 
profanity indiscriminately in every direction now swear 
by Oyler. 



CHAPTEE IX 
VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION 

I The Call of the Country 

There is a call of the land just as there is a call of the 
city, though the call of the city has sounded so insist- 
ently during the past century that men innumerable, 
heeding it, have cast in their lot with the throngs of 
city dwellers. Yet the city proves so unsatisfying that 
thousands are turning from its rows of brick houses 
and lines of paved streets to the fruit trees, dairy herds, 
market gardens and broad acres of the countryside. 
The call of the city is answered by a call which is 
becoming equally distinct — the call ''Back to the 
Land." 

The ten-acre lot may not be any nearer paradise than 
the ' ' Great White Way, ' ' but there is about it a breadth 
of quiet wholesomeness which cannot make its presence 
felt in the bustle of the clanging cars and the rushing 
whirl of crowded streets. The unsmoked blue of the 
sky is over the country, as are the fragrance of flowers, 
woods and mown grass ; the stars are brilliant by night, 
and by day the birds sing, and the cows and barnyard 
fowls talk philosophically together. The children have 
room to run and play between their periods of work, 
which is very near of kin to blessedness, because, aside 
from being instructive, it binds the child into the family 
group in a way that factory work can never do. The 
country cries health and enthusiasm to the world-weary 

170 



VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION 171 

soul as it does to the barefoot boy. Whittier was very 
near the heart of things when he wrote : 

Blessings on thee, little man, 
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! 
With thy turned-up pantaloons. 
And thy merry whistled tunes; 
"*" With thy red lips, redder still 

Kissed by strawberries on the hiU. 

Despite the loneliness, isolation and overwork in some 
country places, the rural life is, on the whole, very rich 
in — 

Sleep that wakes in laughing day. 
Health that mocks the doctor's rules, 
Knowledge never learned of schools. 

Country life holds a great promise for the future — 
a promise of vigorous manhood and womanhood, and 
of earnest, sane living. Through the rapidly progress- 
ing country school, more perhaps than through any 
other agency, this promise may be fulfilled. There are 
two possibilities in the development of the country 
school. On the one hand, several one-room schools may 
be consolidated into one central graded school, to which 
the children are transported at public expense ; on the 
other hand, the old-time, one-room school may be reor-, 
ganized and vitalized. 

II Making Bricks with Straw 

Even the doughtiest son of the soil must needs admit 
that the farmer of the past, living secluded in his house 
or village, was provincial, narrow, bigoted and indi- 
vidualistic. Times are rapidly changing, however, and 
out of the old desolation of rural individualism there 
is arising the spirit of wholesome, virile co-operation, 



172 THE NEW EDUCATION 

which has transformed the face of many a country dis- 
trict almost in the twinkling of an eye. Nowhere is this 
co-operative spirit better expressed than in the consoli- 
dated country schools, which are organized, like the city 
school, by subjects and grades. 

Considered from any viewpoint, the consolidated 
school is superior, as a form of organization, to the dis- 
trict school. Rather, the consolidated school permits 
organization, and the district school does not. Wherever 
it has been tried the testimony in favor of consolida- 
tion is overwhelming. 

''Comparison," cried one county superintendent in 
consternation. ' ' Comparison ! There is no comparison. 
The old one-room school, like the one-horse plough, has 
seen its day. The farmers in this country, after figur- 
ing it out, have reached the conclusion that the one- 
room school is in the same class with a lot of other old- 
fashioned machinery — good in its day, but not good 
enough for them. That is why over eighty per cent 
of our schools have been consolidated. You see it 's this 
way: The farmers need labor badly, and rather than 
see their sons go to a school where they are called on 
once or twice a day by a sadly overworked teacher they 
would put them to work on the farm. The consolidated 
school wins them with its good course of study and the 
boys stay in school." 

That is the first, and perhaps the most vital, advan- 
tage of the consolidated school — ^it permits the enlarge- 
ment of the course of study. Sewing, cooking, agricul- 
ture, manual training, drawing and music, have all been 
introduced, because the teachers have time for them. 
High school work has been added, too. The consolidated 
school, in so far as the course of study is concerned, is 
very nearly on a par with the graded school of the city. 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 



173 



Have you ever attended a one-room country school? 
If you have not you can form but the faintest idea of 
what it means to the teacher. Her day is so split up 
with little periods of class work that she can never do 
anything thoroughly. Here, for example, is an average 
schedule of work for a one-room class in Indiana : 

Daily Program 





FORENOON 




Time 


Class 


Grade 


8:30 


Opening Exercises 


All 


8:40 


Eeading 


Primary 


8:45 


Eeading 


First 


8:50 


Eeading 


Second 


8:55 


Eeading 


Third 


9:00 


Eeading 


Sixth 


9:10 


Grammar 


Fourth 


9:20 


Grammar 


Fifth 


9:30 


Grammar 


Sixth 


9:40 


Grammar 


Seventh 


9:50 


Grammar 


Eighth 


10:00 


Eeading 


Fourth 


10:10 


Eeading 


Seventh 


10:20 


Eecess 


All 


10:30 


Eeading 


Primary 


10:40 


Eeading 


First 


10:50 


Numbers 


Second 


11:00 


Numbers 


Third 


11:05 


Arithmetic 


Fourth 


11:15 


Arithmetic 


Fifth 


11:25 


Arithmetic 


Seventh 


11:35 


Arithmetic 


Eighth 


11:50 


Eeading 


Fifth 


Noon 


Noon 


All 



Appalling, do you say ? What other word describes it 
adequately? There are twenty-one teaching periods in 
the morning; twenty-four in the afternoon. Forty-five 



174 THE NEW EDUCATION 

times each day that teacher must call up and teach a 
new class. The college professor is ''overloaded" with 
fourteen classes a week. This woman had two hundred 
and twenty-five. Will any one be so absurd as to sup- 
pose that she can do them or herself justice ? 

Consolidation, among its many advantages, reduces 
the number of classes per day, and increases the time 
which the teacher may devote to each class. Note the 
contrast between that schedule of a one-room teacher 
and the teaching schedule of a consolidated school 
teacher in the same county: 

Teacher's Daily Program 





FORENOON 




Time 


Class 


Grade 


8:30 


Opening Exercises 


All 


8:45 


Desk 


1-B 


8:50 


Phonetics 


1-A 


9:00 


Phonetics 


1-B 


9:15 


Eeading 


1-A 


9:30 


Eeading 


Second 


9:45 


Eest Exercise 


All 


10:00 


Nature 


All 


10:15 


Eest 


All 


10:30 


Words 


1-B 


10:50 


Words 


1-A 


11:10 


Numbers 


Second 


11:30 


History 


1-A 



The *' district," or one-room, schools in Montgomery 
County, Indiana, have twenty-three pupils per teacher, 
scattered over six grades. The consolidated schools in 
the same county show sixteen pupils per teacher, in 
three grades. While the teacher in the district school 
averages twenty-seven recitations a day, the teacher in 



VITALIZING RURAL EDUCATION I75 

the consolidated school has eleven; but the time per 
recitation is: district, thirteen minutes; consolidated, 
twenty-nine minutes. The number of minutes which the 
district teacher may give to each grade is fifty minutes ; 
the consolidated teacher has one hundred and seventeen 
minutes per grade. Badly sprinkled with figures as that 
statement is, it gives some idea of the increased oppor- 
tunities for effective teaching in the consolidated school. 
No teacher can do justice to twenty-seven classes per 
day, and an average recitation period of thirteen min- 
utes is so short as to be almost unworthy of mention. 

Most consolidated schools, in addition to the ordinary 
rooms, have an assembly room in which lectures, festi- 
vals, socials, public meetings, and farmers ' institutes are 
held. Acting as a center for community life, the con- 
solidated school takes a real place in the instruction of 
the community. The big brick or stone building, well 
constructed and surrounded, as it usually is, by well- 
kept grounds, furnishes the same kind of local monu- 
ment that the court house supplies in the county seat. 
People point proudly to it as "their" public building. 
It is an experience of note in traveling across an open 
farming country to come suddenly upon a splendidly- 
equipped, two-story school, set down, at a point of van- 
tage, several miles away from the nearest railroad. 

The consolidated school at Linden, Montgomery 
County, Indiana, for example, situated in a town of 
scarcely three hundred inhabitants, is equipped with 
gas from its own gas-plant; with steam heat; ample 
toilet accommodations; an assembly room; and halls so 
broad that the primary children may play some of their 
games there in bad weather. 

One of the most widely discussed among consolidated 
schools is the John Swaney Consolidated School, of 



176 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Putnam County, Illinois.^ The John Swaney School 
occupies a twenty-four acre campus, lying a mile and a 
half from the nearest village, and ten miles from the 
nearest town. The agitation for consolidation in Put- 
nam County led John Swaney and his wife to give 
twenty-four acres as a campus for a local consolidated 
school. Hence the name and much of the success which 
has attended the work of the school. 

The school cost $15,000, equipped. It is of brick with 
four class-rooms, two laboratories, a library, offices, a 
manual training shop, a domestic science kitchen, and a 
basement play-room. The building is lighted, heated, 
and ventilated in the most modern fashion. The John 
Swaney School thus came into existence with an equip- 
ment adequate for any school and elaborate for a school 
situated far from the channels of trade and industry. 

The course of study organized includes all of the 
modern specialized work which the effective city school 
is able to do. Securing good teachers and possessing 
unique facilities, the school carries boys and girls 
through a series of years, in which intellectual, experi- 
mental, manual, recreational, and social activities com- 
bine to make the school the center of community life 
and community influence. 

The school campus is used as a laboratory and a play 
ground. The trees provide subject matter for a course 
in horticulture. The fertile land is turned to agricul- 
tural use, and the broad expanse of twenty-four acres 
furnishes additional space for games and sports. 

The social life of this school is no less effective than 
is its location and equipment. The teachers ' cottage, an 

1 An extensive reference to this school will be found in * ' Country 
Life and the Country School," Mabel Carney, Kow, Peterson & 
Company, Chicago, 1912. 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION I77 

old school building converted for this purpose, fur- 
nishes a center for the life of the teaching staff, and 
makes a background for the social life of the entire 
school. There are two strong literary societies, includ- 
ing all of the pupils in the school. Each year plays are 
presented on the school stage. There are musical or- 
ganizations, parents' conferences, entertainments, and 
community gatherings of all descriptions. In every 
sense, the John Swaney School is a community center. 

Prosperity has followed in the wake of this educational 
development. The John Swaney School is known far 
and wide, and consequently farm renters and farm 
buyers alike seek the locality because of the educational 
opportunities which the school affords for their children, 
and because of the social opportunities which the com- 
munity around the school affords for them. 

The movement for school consolidation, like many 
another good movement, originated in Massachusetts. 
Prom that state it has spread extensively to Indiana, 
Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Idaho, Washington, and a 
number of other states, — East, West, and South. In 
every progressive rural community, wherever prosperous 
farmers and comfortable farm homes are found, there 
the consolidation movement is being discussed, agitated, 
or operated. 

The movement toward consolidation has been par- 
ticularly active during the past few years in the South. 
The Southern States are, for the most part, largely 
agricultural communities. The rural population far out- 
numbers the urban population, and it is in these dis- 
tricts, therefore, that the consolidated school can have its 
greatest influence. By 1912, the state of Louisiana 
alone was able to report over 250 consolidated county 
schools. Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina show 



178 THE NEW EDUCATION 

themselves almost equally active in forwarding this 
generally accepted progressive educational movement. 

The difficulties involved in consolidation may be 
summed up under two heads. There is, first of all, the 
conservatism and prejudice of those people who believe 
that the things which were good enough for their 
fathers, are still good enough for them. Secondly, there 
are the technical difficulties involved in transporting 
pupils from distant localities to the school center. 
Roads are bad at certain times of the year. Wagons are 
costly. Desirable drivers are difficult to secure. These 
factors, taken together, make the administrative diffi- 
culties of the consolidated school far greater than those 
of the old-time one-room country school. 

The forces operating to overcome these difficulties are 
destined ultimately to triumph. The widespread accept- 
ance of an agricultural education that followed upon 
the work of experiment stations, universities and high 
schools, has convinced even the most reactionary of the 
old-time group that there are, at least, certain things in 
the new generation which surpass, in their economic and 
social value, the like things of the old. The inroads of 
scientific agriculture have played havoc with agricul- 
tural tradition and conservatism. The obvious merits of 
the new scheme are destined to overcome the prejudices 
which the long continuance of the old scheme created. 

The technical difficulties of transportation are being 
met in a number of ways. Wagon builders in various 
parts of the country are devoting themselves to the 
designing and building of wagons which will be cheap 
and effective. State and local authorities are actively 
engaged in the improvement of roads. The near future 
promises a standard of transportation facilities that will 
far surpass any that the consolidation movement has 



VITALIZING RUEAL EDUCATION 179 

thus far enjoyed. The details of transportation ad- 
ministration are being worked out variously in different 
communities, and always with a view to the particular 
needs of the community involved. 

While the disadvantages of consolidation lie mainly in 
the overcoming of prejudice and the solution of admin- 
istrative problems, the .advantages of consolidation seem 
to be primarily educational and social. Th& consoli- 
dated school is the only method thus far devised for 
giving graded school and high school privileges under 
adequately paid teachers to the inhabitants of rural 
communities. Again the consolidated school is the only 
method of securing a school attendance sufficiently large 
to provide the incentive arising from competition and 
emulation for pupils of each grade or age. Further- 
more, the consolidated school, standing out as the most 
distinctive feature of a rural landscape, is readily con- 
verted into a center of rural life and activity where 
young folks and old folks alike find a common ground 
for social interests. 

The advantages of the rural school are thus summed 
up by Mabel Carney,^ — "For the complete and satisfy- 
ing solution of the problem of rural education and for 
the general reconstruction and redirection of country 
life, the consolidated country school is the best agency 
thus far devised." The reasons for this statement are 
summed up under seven heads. In the first place, the 
consolidated school is a democratic, public school, directly 
in the hands of the people who support it. Secondly, it 
is at the door of farm houses and is wholly available, 
even more available, when public transportation is pro- 
vided, than the present one-teacher school. Third, every 
child in the farm community is reached by it. All 

1 Supra, pp. 180-181. 



180 THE NEW EDUCATION 

children may attend because of the transportation facili- 
ties afforded. Fourth, the cost of the school is reason- 
able. Fifth, it accommodates all grades, including the 
high school. The country high school, by excluding the 
younger children, denies modem educational facilities to 
any except pupils of high school grade. Sixth, it pre- 
serves a balanced course of study. While educating in 
terms of farm-life experience, it does not force children 
prematurely into any vocation, although it prepares them 
generally for all vocations. Lastly, the consolidated 
school is the best social and educational center for the 
rural community that has been thus far organized. 

However just may be the judging of a tree by its 
fruit, the fruit of the consolidation movement seems 
uniformly good. First, because the children get to 
school; and second, because after they get there they 
are taught something worth while. 

When the schools of a district are consolidated, trans- 
portation must be furnished for the students. Union 
Township, Montgomery County, Indiana, covering one 
hundred and six square miles, has replaced thirty-seven 
district schools with six consolidated schools. Some of 
the children are brought as far as five miles in wagons, 
or on the interurban electric cars. The wagon calls at 
stated hours, and the children must be ready. Tardi- 
ness is therefore reduced, until one county reports ten 
hundred and ninety-one cases of tardiness in its district 
schools (for 1910-11) and ninety-two cases in consoli- 
dated schools, although in this county there are more 
children in the consolidated than in the district schools. 

Then, too, the children stay later in the consolidated 
schools. In Montgomery County, Indiana, the children 
who have not finished the eighth grade and who are 
staying away from school constitute twenty-nine per 



VITALIZING EURAL EDUCATION 181 

cent, of the population in the consolidated schools, as 
against sixty-three per cent, in the district schools. The 
Vernon consolidated school in Trumbull County, Ohio, 
has enrolled nearly nine-tenths of the children of school 
age. Before the consolidation only three-fifths were in 
school. 

Theoretically, the introduction of agriculture, manual 
training, and other applied courses which are found in 
most consolidated schools, should have some effect on 
the lives of the children. In order to show its extent 
Superintendent Hall, of Montgomery County, Indiana, 
asked one thousand children (five hundred in district 
schools and five hundred in consolidated schools) what 
they proposed to do after they left school. Arranged 
according to the kind of school in which the children 
were, the answers showed as follows : 

District Consolidated 

Chosen Profession Schools Schools 

Teaching 151 122 

Business 123 73 

Farming 92 129 

Law 55 21 

Mechanics 48 86 

Medicine 13 9 

Ministry 12 4 

Stock-breeding 3 41 

Miscellaneous 3 15 

Total 500 500 

Agricultural studies — stock-breeding and farming — 
and mechanics show up strongly in the consolidated 
schools, at the expense of teaching, business and law in 
the district schools. While such figures do not prove 
anything, they indicate the direction in which the minds 
of consolidated school children are moving. 



182 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Eli M. Rapp, of Berks County, Pennsylvania, voices 
the spirit of the consolidation movement when he 
says: 

''The consolidated school furnishes the framework 
for a well-organized, rural education. Its course of 
study is broader, its appeal is stronger, its service to 
the community more pronounced, and, best of all, it 
holds the children. Progressive rural communities have 
wakened up to the fact that unless their children are 
educated together there is a strong probability that they 
will be ignorant separately.'* 

Ill Making the One-Room Country School Worth While 

The brilliant success of the consolidated schools re- 
veals the possibilities of team-work in rural education, 
but it cannot detract from the wonderful work which 
has been done, and is still being done, by the one-room 
rural school. Always there will be districts so sparsely 
settled that the consolidated school is not feasible. In 
such localities the one-room school, transformed as it 
may be by enlightened effort, must still be relied upon 
to provide education. Nor is this outcome undesirable. 
The one-room country school bristles with educational 
possibilities. Under intelligent direction, even its cum- 
bersome organization may yield a plenteous harvest of 
useful knowledge and awakened interest. 

The droning reading lesson and the sing-song multi- 
plication table are heard no more in the progressive 
country school. In their place are English work, which 
reflects the spirit of rural things, and the arithmetic of 
the farm. Here is a boy of thirteen, in a one-room coun- 
try school, writing an essay on ''Selecting, Sowing and 
Testing Seed Corn," an essay amply illustrated by pen 
and ink drawings of growing com, corn in the ear and 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 183 

individual corn kernels. Mabel Gorman asks, "Does it 
pay the farmer to protect the birds ? ' ' After describing 
the services of birds in destroying weed seeds and dan- 
gerous insects and emphasizing their beauty and cheer- 
fulness, she concludes : ' ' The question is, does it pay 
the farmer to protect the birds?" The only answer is 
that anything that adds to the attractiveness of the farm 
is worthy of cultivation. Happily a farmer who pro- 
tects the birds secures a double return — increased profit 
from his crop and increased pleasure of living. Viola 
Lawson, writing on the subject, ''How to Dust and 
Sweep," makes some pertinent comments. ''I think if 
a house is very dirty, a carpet sweeper is not a very good 
thing. A broom is best, because you can't get around 
the corners with a sweeper." Note this hint to the 
school board: "We spend about one-third of our time 
in the school house, so it is very important to keep the 
dust down. The directors ought to let the school have 
dustless chalk. If they did there wouldn't be so much 
throat trouble among teachers and children. Then so 
many children are so careless about cleaning their feet, 
boys especially. They go out and curry the horses, and 
clean out the stables, and get their feet all nasty. Then 
they come to school and bring that dust into the school- 
room. Isn 't that awful ? ' ' Viola is thirteen. 

Over in eastern Wisconsin Miss Ellen B. McDonald, 
County Superintendent of Oconto County, has her chil- 
dren engaged in contests all the year round — growing 
corn, sugar beets, Alaska peas and potatoes; the boys 
making axe handles and the girls weaving rag carpet. 
During the summer Miss McDonald writes to the chil- 
dren who are taking part in the contests suggesting 
methods and urging good work. One of the letters 
began with the well-known lines: 



134 - THE NEW EDUCATION 

Sajj how do you hoe your row, young man, 

Say, how do you hoe your row, 
Do you hoe it fair, do you hoe it square, 

Do you hoe it the best you know? 

' ' How are you getting along with the contests ? ' ' con- 
tinues the letter. ''Are you taking good care of your 
beets, peas, corn or garden ? Remember that it will pay 
you well for all the work you do upon it." In reply 
one girl writes : ''My corn is a little over ^yb feet high. 
My tomatoes have little tomatoes on, but mamma's are 
just beginning to blossom. My beets are growing fine. 
I planted them very late. My lettuce is much better 
than mamma's. We have been eating it right along." 
Mark the note of exultation over the fact that her crop 
is ahead of her mother's. 

Sometimes the school child brings from school knowl- 
edge which materially helps his father. Here is a Wis- 
consin English lesson, and a proof of the saying, "Out 
of the mouths of babes and sucklings," all in one. 

These country boys and girls take an interest in 
English work, because it deals with the things they 
know. Miss Ellen B. McDonald, County Superintendent 
of Schools in Oconto County, Wisconsin, publishes a 
column of school news in each of the three county news- 
papers. Here is one of her contributions, in the form 
of an English lesson and a counting lesson combined: 
(A "rag-baby tester" is a device for determining the 
fertility of seed corn before it is planted.) 

"My dear Miss McDonald: 

' ' The rag-baby tester is causing a whole lot of excite- 
ment. We have tested one lot and this morning started 
another. We notice one thing in particular, the corn 
which was dried by stove heat sprouts perfectly, while 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 185 

that dried in granaries, etc., is not sprouting at all. Last 
fall papa saved his seed corn, selecting it very carefully, 
and hung it up in the granary to dry. I selected several 
ears from the same field and at the same time, and dried 
them on the corn tree at school. Upon testing them this 
spring papa's corn does not sprout at all, while mine is 
sprouting just exactly as good as the Golden Glow sent 
out to the school children. This morning I am testing 
some more of papa 's, and if that fails he will have to buy 
his seed, a thing he has never had to do before. We 
tested the corn secured from four of our interested 
farmers last week and one lot germinated; the other 
three did not. This morning pupils from seven different 
homes brought seed to be tested. "We had a package of 
last year's seed left and tested several kernels of that, 
as well as some sent out this year, and we think last 
year 's seed is testing a little the better. ' ' 

The new arithmetic, like the new English, deals with 
the country. It seems a little odd, just at first, to see 
boys and girls standing at the board computing potato 
yields, milk yields, the contents of granaries, the price 
of bags and the cost of barns and chicken houses; yet 
what more natural than that the country child should 
figure out his and perhaps his father's problems in the 
arithmetic class at school? 

The geography is no less pertinent. Soil formation, 
drainage, the location and grouping of farm buildings, 
the physical characteristics of the township and of the 
county are matters of universal interest and concern. 
Every school in Berks County, Pennsylvania, is pro- 
vided with a fine soil survey map of the county, made 
by the United States Geological Survey. What more 
ideal basis for rural geography ? 

Here and there a country school is waking up to the 



186 THE NEW EDUCATION 

physical needs of country children. ''Country boys are 
not symmetrically developed/' asserts Superintendent 
Eapp, of Berks County. "They are flat-chested and 
round-shouldered." That is interesting, indeed. Mr. 
Rapp explains : ' ' It is because of the character of their 
work, nearly all of which tends to flatten the chest. 
Whether or not that is the explanation, the fact remains, 
and with it the no less evident fact that it is the business 
of the school to correct the defects. In an effort to do 
this we have worked out a series of fifty games which 
the children are taught in the schools. ' ' In May a great 
*' Field Day and Play Festival" is held, to which the 
entire county is invited. Each school trains and sends 
in its teams. Trolleys, buggies, autos and hay wagons 
contribute their quota, until five thousand people have 
gathered in an out-of-the-way spot to help the children 
enjoy themselves. 

Mr. Rapp is a great believer in activity. Tireless him- 
self, he has fifty teacher-farmers — men who teach in the 
winter and farm in the summer — an excellent setting 
for country boys and girls. He believes in activity for 
children, too. "If the school appealed as it ought to 
the motor energies of children, instead of having to 
drive them in, you would have to drive them out." To 
prove his point Mr. Rapp cites the instance of one man 
teacher, who, before the days of manual training in the 
schools, decided to have manual training in his one-room 
Berks County school. 

' ' He did the work himself, ' ' Mr. Rapp says, ' ' dug out 
the cellar and set up a shop in it. The only help he had 
was the help of the pupils, and the work was done in 
recess time and after school. They made their own tools, 
cabinets, book-cases, picture-frames, clock-frames, and 
anything else they wanted. And do you know, when it 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 187 

got dark, that man would send the children home from 
the school in order to be rid of them. ' ' 

Consolidated schools help. They make rural educa- 
tion broader and easier, but the one-room country school, 
presided over by a live teacher, may be made worth 
while. Social events, sports, contests in farm work and 
domestic work, studies couched in terms of the country, 
may all prove potent factors in shaping the child and 
the community. 

IV Eepainting the Little Bed Sdioolhouse 

Without, as well as within, the little red school-house 
may be transformed. The course of study may estab- 
lish a standard in rural thought. The rural school-house 
may set a standard of rural architecture and landscape 
gardening. / 

How typical of old-time country schools are the lines : 

Still sits the school-house by the road, 

A ragged beggar sunning. 
Around it still the sumacs grow, 

And blackberry vines are running. 

The unpainted, rough exterior of the little school vied 
with the unkempt school grounds. Both supplied sub- 
jects for artistic treatment. To the consternation of the 
poet and the romancer, the modern one-room school is 
painted, and the school yard, instead of being filled with 
a thicket of blackberry and sumac, is laid out for play- 
ground, flower-beds and gardens. The up-to-date coun- 
try school, while far less picturesque, is much more 
architectural and more useful. 

The State Superintendent of Education in Wisconsin 
furnishes free to local school boards plans of modern 
one-room schools. With a hall at each end for wraps, 



188 THE NEW EDUCATION 

an improved heating and ventilating device, and all of 
the light coming from the north side, where there is one 
big window from near the floor to the ceiling, these 
buildings, costing from two thousand dollars up, pro- 
vide in every way for the health and comfort of the chil- 
dren. The superintendent may go farther than to sug- 
gest in Wisconsin, however, for if a school building 
becomes dilapidated he may condemn it, and then state 
aid to local education is refused until suitable buildings 
are provided. The law has proved an excellent deter- 
rent to educational parsimony. 

Superintendent Kern, of Eockford, Illinois, has done 
particularly effective work in beautifying his schools. 
Within the schools are tastefully painted and decorated. 
Outside there are flower-beds, hedges, individual garden 
plots, neatly-cut grass, and all of the other necessaries 
for a well-kept yard. No longer crude and unsightly, 
the Rockford school yards are models which any one in 
the neighborhood may copy with infinite advantage. As 
the school becomes the center of community life local 
pride makes more and more demands. Could you visit 
some of the finer school buildings in Ohio, Indiana, Wis- 
consin and Illinois you would be better able to under- 
stand why men boast of ' ' Our School ' ' in the same tone 
that they use when boasting of their corn yields. 

V A Fairyland of Rural Education 

You will perhaps be somewhat skeptical — you big folks 
who have ceased to believe in little people — when you 
hear that out in western Iowa there is a county which 
is an educational fairyland. Yet if you had traveled up 
and down the country, gone into the wretched country 
school buildings, seen the lack-luster teaching and the 
indifferent scholars, which are so appallingly numerous ; 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 189 

if you had read in the report of the investigating com- 
mittee which has just completed its survey of Wisconsin 
rural schools the statement that in many districts the 
hog pens were on a better plane of efficiency than the 
school houses ; if you had seen the miserable inadequacy 
of country schools North, East, South and West, and 
had then been transported into the midst of the school 
system of Page County, Iowa, you would have been sure 
that you had passed through the looking-glass into the 
queer world beyond. Yet Page County is there — a fairy- 
land presided over by a really, truly fairy. 

The schools in Page County, Iowa, which, by the way, 
is one of the best corn counties in Iowa, are little repub- 
lics in which the children have the fun, do the work and 
grow up strong and kind. Each school has its song, its 
social gatherings, its clubs, and its teams. How you 
would have pricked up your ears if you had driven past 
the Hawley School and heard a score of lusty voices 
shouting the school song to the tune of ''Everybody's 
Doing It!" 

December was the time of the Page County contests, 
when each school sent its exhibits of dressmaking, cook- 
ing, rope-splicing, barn-planning, essay-writing and its 
corn- judging teams to the county seat, where they were 
displayed and judged very much as they would be at 
a county fair. Further, it was the time when the prizes 
were to be awarded to the boy having the best acre of 
alfalfa, of corn and of potatoes. (Queer, isn't it, but 
last year a girl got the first prize for the best crop of 
potatoes.) December is a great month in Page County. 
This year more than three thousand exhibits were sent 
into Clarinda, the county seat. Every boy and girl is on 
tip-toe with expectancy, and after the aw^ards the suc- 
cessful schools are as proud as turkey cocks. 



190 THE NEW EDUCATION 

"We have never taken the thing seriously here be- 
fore, ' ' explained a farmer who had left his work in mid- 
afternoon and come in to teach the boys of a school 
how to judge seed corn. ''This year we're going down 
there to Clarinda for all that's in it." If he hadn't 
meant what he said he would scarcely have been spend- 
ing his hours in the school-room. If the Hawleyville 
boys had not been thoroughly in earnest they would not 
have been there, after school, learning how to judge corn. 

The community around each school is agog with excite- 
ment while preparations are being made for the county 
contest. The men folk advise the boys regarding their 
corn-judging and their models of farm implements and 
farm buildings, while the women give lessons galore, in 
the mysteries of country cooking, for it is no small mat- 
ter to be hailed and crowned as the best fourteen-year- 
old cook in Page County, Iowa. 

One Page County teacher conducts her domestic sci- 
ence work in the evening at the homes of the girls. 
On a given day of each week the entire class visits 
the home of one of the girls, prepares, cooks and eats 
a meal. What an opportunity to inculcate lessons in 
domestic economy at first hand! What a chance to 
show the behind- the-time housekeeper (for there are 
such even in Page County) how things are being done! 

Because Page County is a great corn county much 
school time is devoted to com. In every school hangs a 
string of seed com which is brought in by the boys in the 
fall, dried during the winter, and in the spring tested for 
fertility. A Babcock milk-tester, owned by the county, 
circulates from school to school, enabling the children 
to test the productivity of their cows. Teams of boys, 
under the direction of the school, make their own road 
drags, and care for stretches of road — from one to five 



VITALIZING EUEAL EDUCATION 191 

miles. The boys doing the best work are rewarded with 
substantial prizes. Do you begin to suspect the reason 
for the interest which the big folks take in the doings 
of Page County's little folks? It is because the little 
folks go to schools which are a vital part of the com- 
munity. 

Three times a year there is, in each school, a gathering 
of the friends and parents of the children. Sometimes 
they celebrate Thanksgiving, sometimes they have a 
"Parents' Day." Anyway, the boys decorate the school, 
the girls cook cake and candy, and the parents come and 
have a good evening. The children begin with their 
school song, sung, perhaps, like this Kile School song, to 
the tune of ' ' Home, Sweet Home " : 

1. What school is the dearest, 
The neatest and best, 

What school is more pleasant, 
More dear than the rest. 
Whose highways and byways 
Have charms from each day, 
Whose roads and alfalfa. 
They have come to stay. 

Chorus. 

Kile, Kile, our own Kile, 
We love her, we'll praise her, 
We'll all work for Kile. 

2. Whose corn is so mellow. 
Whose cane is so sweet. 
Whose taters are so mellow. 
Whose coal's hard to beat, 
Whose Ma's and whose Grandpa's 
Are brave, grand and true, 
Their love for their children 
They never do rue. 



192 THE NEW EDUCATION 

There follows a program like the program of any 
other social evening, except that very often the parents 
take part as well as the children. The things are inter- 
esting, too, like this little duet, sung at the Thanksgiving 
entertainment by two of the Kile girls : 

1. If a body pays the taxes, 
Surely you'll agree, 

That a body earns a franchise, 
Whether he or she. j 

Chorus. 

Every man now has the ballot. 

None, you know, have we. 

But we have brains and we can use them, 

Just as well as he. 

2. If a city's just a household, 
As it is, they say, 

Then every city needs housecleaning, 
Needs it right away. 

3. Every city has its fathers, 
Honors them, I we 'en. 

But every city must have mothers. 
That the house be clean. 

4. Man now makes the laws for women, 
Kindly, too, at that. 

But they often seem as funny 
As a man-made hat. 

The grand event of this fairyland comes in the sum- 
mer, when the boys and girls from all of the schools go 
to the county seat for a summer camp, where, between 
attending classes and lectures, playing games and revel- 
ing in the joys of camp life, they come to have a very 
much broader view of the world and a more intense 
interest in one another. 



VITALIZING RUEAL EDUCATION I93 

They are only one-room schools out there in Page 
County, but they have adapted themselves to the needs 
of the community, focusing the attention of parents and 
children alike on the bigger things in rural life, and the 
ways in which a school may help a countryside to appre- 
ciate and enjoy them. So the boys and girls of Page 
County have their fairyland, and are devoted to the good 
fairy, who, in the shape of a generous, kindly county 
superintendent, helps them to enjoy it. 

VI The Task of the Country School 

The teacher of a one-room school in Berks County was 
quizzing a class about Columbus. 

' ' Where was he born ? ' ' she queried. 

''In Genoa." 

' ' And where is Genoa, Ella ? ' ' 

"On the Mediterranean Sea," replied Ella promptly. 

' ' What was his business ? ' ' was her next question. 

"He was a sailor," ventured a bright boy. "A 
sailor," chorused the class. 

' ' Why was he a sailor, Edith ? ' ' Edith shook her head. 

"Yes, George." 

"Why, because he lived on the sea." 

"Of course. Now think a minute. Do many of the 
boys from this country become sailors?" 

" No 'm, " from the class. 

"What do they become?" 

"Farmers," cried the class, hissing the "f " and flat- 
tening the "a." 

Certainly, the boys in a farming community, brought 
up on the farm, naturally become farmers, yet in the 
interim, between babyhood and farmer life, they go to 
school. How absurdly easy the task of the school — to 
determine that they shall be intelligent, progressive, en- 



194 THE NEW EDUCATION 

thusiastic, up-to-date farmers. The girls, too, marry 
farmers, keep farmers' homes and raise farmers' sons. 
How simple is the duty of seeing that they are prepared 
to do these things well ! 

The task of the city school is complex because of the 
vast number of businesses, professions, industrial occu- 
pations and trades which children enter. In comparison 
the country school has the plainest of plain sailing. What 
are the ingredients of successful farmers and farmers' 
wives ? What proportion of physical education, of men- 
tal training, of technical instruction in agriculture, of 
suggestions for practical farm work, of dressmaking, 
sewing and cooking, enter into the making of farmers' 
boys and farmers' girls who will live up to the tradi- 
tions of the American farm? To what extent must the 
school be a center for social activity and social enthu- 
siasm? How shall the school make the farm and the 
small country town better living places for the men and 
women of to-morrow? 

The duty of the country school is simple and clear. It 
must fit country children for country life. First it must 
know what are the needs of the country; then, manned 
by teachers whose training has prepared them to appre- 
ciate country problems, it will become the power that a 
country school ought to be in directing the thoughts and 
lives of the community. 



CHAPTER X 

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND 
SUCKLINGS 

I Miss Belle 

The sun shone mildly, though it was still late January, 
while the wind, which occasionally rustled the dry leaves 
about the fence corners, had scarcely a suggestion of win- 
ter in its soft touch. Across the white pike, and away 
on either side over the rolling blue grass meadows, the 
Kentucky landscape unfolded itself, lined with brown 
and white fences, and dotted with venerable trees. A 
buggy, drawn by a carefully-stepping bay horse, came 
over the knoll ahead, framing itself naturally into the 
beautiful landscape. Surely, that must be Joe and Miss 
Belle ; it was so like her, since she always seemed at home 
everywhere, making herself a natural part of her sur- 
roundings. Another moment and there was no longer 
any doubt. It was Miss Belle with three youngsters 
crowded into her lap and beside her in the narrow buggy 
seat, while a dangling leg in the rear suggested an occu- 
pant of the axle. 

"Well, well," cried Miss Belle, cordially, as Joe 
stopped, glad of any excuse not to go, "where are you 
bound for? You didn't come all the way over to ride 
back with me?" 

"No, indeed, Miss Belle," I laughed back, "no one 
ever expects to ride with you so near the school-house. 
I '11 walk along ahead until you begin to unload. ' ' 

195 



196 THE NEW EDUCATION 

''Go along, now you're casting reflections on Joe's 
speed. Come, Joe, we'll show him." Joe, who did not 
leave his accustomed walk at once, finally yielded to the 
suggestion of a gentle blow from the whip and broke into 
a trot. 

"Lem'me walk with you," cried the rider on the 
springs, slipping from her perch and stepping out beside 
the buggy. So we journeyed for half a mile. The horse, 
under constant urging, jogged along, while the spring 
rider and I trotted side by side over the well-made pike. 
Then Miss Belle drew rein in front of a small, yellow 
house. 

' ' Now, out you go, ' ' she exclaimed to her young com- 
panions. "All out here but one. Goodbye, dearies. All 
right, up you get," and in a moment we were snugly 
fixed in the buggy for a half hour's ride behind Joe. 

' ' You see those two little girls who got off there, ' ' said 
Miss Belle, pointing to the house we had just left, ' ' well, 
they are two of a family of six — two younger than those. 
Their mother died last winter, so naturally I take an 
interest in them. Their father does his best with them, 
but it is a big task for a man to handle alone. ' ' 

The last child was unloaded by this time, and Miss 
Belle, settling herself back comfortably, chatted about 
her work in a one-room country school in the Blue Grass 
belt of Kentucky. 

II Going to Work Through the Children 

"Maybe there are thirty-five families that my school 
ought to draw from," she began. "Six years ago when 
I took this school some of them surely did need help. 
Dearie me ! The things they didn 't know about comfort 
and decency would fix up a whole neighborhood for life. 
They wore stockings till they dropped off. Some of the 



OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 197 

girls put on sweaters in October, wore them till Christ- 
mas, washed them, and then wore them till spring. You 
never saw such utterly wretched homes. There was 
hardly a window shade in the neighborhood, nor a cur- 
tain either. It wasn 't that the women didn 't care — they 
simply didn't know. 

"I saw it all," said Miss Belle, nodding her head 
thoughtfully, "and it worried me a great deal at first. 
I just had to get hold of those people and help them — 
I had made up my mind to that. Impatience wouldn't 
do, though, so I said to myself, 'Now, my dear, don't 
you be in any hurry. You can't do anything with the 
old folks, they're too proud. If you succeed at aU it's 
got to be through the children.' So I just waited, keep- 
ing my eyes open, and teaching school all of the while, 
until, the first thing I knew, the way opened up — you 
never would guess how— it was through biscuits. 

Ill Beginning on Muffins 

**The folks around here never had seen anything ex- 
cept white bread. There wasn't a piece of cornbread or 
of graham anywhere. You know what their white bread 
is, too — heavy, sour, badly made and only half cooked. 
The old folks were satisfied, though, and there didn't seem 
to be any way to go at it except through the youngsters. 
Day after day I saw them take raw white biscuits and 
sandwiches made of salt-rising white bread out of their 
baskets, wondering how they could eat them. Still I 
didn't say anything, but every lunch time I ate corn 
muffins or graham wafers, with all of the gusto I could 
master. One day a little girl up and asked me : 

'' 'Say, Miss Belle, what may you all be eatin'?' 

" 'Corn muffins,' said I. 'Ever taste them?' 

"'Nope.' 



198 THE NEW EDUCATION 

'' 'Well, wouldn't you like a taste?' 

'''Sure I would.' 

' ' She took it, and a great big one, too. ' Um, ' says she, 
smacking her lips, ' Um. ' 

" 'Like it?' I asked. 

" 'Um,' says she again, like a baby with a full stomach. 

' ' ' Oh, Miss Belle, ' piped up Annie, ' how do you make 
'em?' 

' ' That was the chance I had been waiting for. 

' ' ' Would you like to know ? ' I asked, and to a chorus 
of ' Sure, ' ' 'Deed we would, ' ' Oh, yes, ' I put the recipe 
on the board, and it wasn't two days before those girls 
brought in as good corn muffins as I ever tasted. Little 
Annie is a good cook — never saw a better — and before 
the week was out she says to me : 

" 'Miss Belle, ma's mad with you.' 

" 'What all's the matter?' I asked. 

" 'She says since you taught us to make those corn 
muffins she '11 be eaten out of house and home. The first 
night I made 'em pa ate eleven. He hasn 't slackened off 
a bit since. He must have 'em every day. ' 

"That made the going pretty easy," Miss Belle went 
on. ' ' The muffins were mighty good, they were new, and, 
by comparison, the white biscuits didn't have a show. 
It wasn 't long before I had the whole neighborhood mak- 
ing corn muffins, graham wafers, black bread, graham 
bread and whole-wheat bread. They sure did catch on 
to the idea quickly. Every Monday I put a recipe on 
the board. These women knew .how to cook the fancy 
things. It was the plain, simple, wholesome things that 
they needed to know about, so my recipes were always 
for them. During the week each of the children cooks 
the thing and brings it to me, and the one who gets the 
best result puts a recipe on the board Friday. 



OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES I99 

"You see, after I once got started it wasn't hard to 
follow up any line I liked. By the time I was putting 
a recipe a week on the board the mothers got naturally 
interested and would come to school to ask about this 
recipe and that. They wouldn't take any advice, you 
understand, not they ! They knew all about cooking, so 
they thought, but they were mighty proud of the things 
their daughters did, particularly when they took the 
prizes at the county fair. Besides that, it made a whole 
lot of difference at home, because the things they made 
helped out a lot and tasted mighty good on the table." 

Miss Belle's next move was against the cake — soggy, 
sticky stuff, full of butter, that was very generally eaten 
by all of the families that could afford it. Expensive and 
fearfully indigestible it made up, together with bread, 
almost the entire contents of most lunch baskets. 

"I couldn't see quite how to go about the cake busi- 
ness," Miss Belle commented, "because they were par- 
ticularly proud of it. Finally, though, I hit on an idea. 
One of the women in the neighborhood was sick. She 
was a good cook and knew good cooking when she saw 
it, so I got my sister to make an angel cake, which I took 
around to her. I do believe it was the first light cake 
she had ever tasted — anyway, she was tickled to death. 
It wasn't long after that before every one who could 
afford to do it was making angel food. Of course it's 
expensive, but since they were bound to make cake, that 
was a lot better than the other. ' ' 

Similar tactics gradually replaced the fried meats by 
roasts and stews. When Miss Belle came, meat swam in 
fat while it cooked and came from the stove loaded with 
grease. Everybody fried meat, and when by chance 
they bought a roast they began by boiling all of the juice 
out of it before they put it in the oven. Miss Belle's 



200 THE NEW EDUCATION 

stews and roasts made better eating, though. The men- 
folks liked them hugely and the old frying process was 
doomed. 

^'No/' concluded Miss Belle, laughingly, "you can't 
do a thing with the old folks. Why if I was to go into a 
kitchen belonging to one of those women and tell her 
how to sift flour she would run me out quick, but when 
Annie comes home and makes such muffins that the man 
of the family eats eleven the first time, there is no way 
to answer back. The muffins speak for themselves." 

IV Taking the Boys in Hand 

While the girls were making over the diet of the neigh- 
borhood Miss Belle was working through the boys to im- 
prove the strains of corn used by the farmers, the 
methods of fertilizing and the quality of the truck 
patches. A few years ago when the farmer scorned new- 
fangled ideas it was the boys that took home methods for 
numbering and testing each ear of corn to determine 
whether or not the kernels on it would sprout when they 
were planted. The farmer who turns a deaf ear to argu- 
ment can offer no effective reply to a corn-tester in which 
only one kernel in three has sprouted. The ears are 
infertile, from one cause or another, and the sooner he 
replaces them by fertile seed the better for his corn crop. 

Out beside a white limestone pike stands the school in 
which Miss Belle has done her work. One would hardly 
stop to look at it, because it differs in no way from thou- 
sands of similar country school-houses. Modest and un- 
assuming, like Miss Belle, it holds only one feature of 
real interest — the faces of the children. Bright, eager, 
enthusiastic, they labor earnestly over their lessons in 
order that they may get at their ''busy work," and 



OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 20] 

linger over their ' ' busy work ' ' during recess and after 
school, because it glides so swiftly from their deft fingers. 
In this, as in everything else which she does. Miss Belle 
has a system. The child whose lessons are not done, and 
done up to a certain grade, is not taught new stitches or 
new designs. Even the youngest responds to the stimu- 
lus, and the little girl in a pink frock, with pink ribbons 
on her brown pig^tails, lays aside the mat she is making 
to write "Annie Belle Lewis" on the board, and to tell 
you that she is seven ; while John Murphy, of the mature 
age of eleven, stops crocheting ear-mul9ers for a moment 
to tell you what he is doing and why he does it. 

V ''Busy Work" as an Asset 

"You never would guess what a help the 'busy work' 
is," smiled Miss Belle. "You see, they never can do it 
until their lessons are finished, so they are as good at 
arithmetic as they are at patching. Then I always teach 
the little ones patterns and stitches where they have to' 
count, 'One, two, three, four, five, and drop one,' you 
know, and in the shortest time they learn their number 
work. It seems to go so much more quickly when they 
do it in connection with some pieces that they can see. 
But you never would guess the best thing the sewing has 
done — it has stopped gossiping. It's hard to believe, I 
know, but it 's true. There used to be a lot of trouble in 
this neighborhood. People told tales, there was ill feel- 
ing, and folks quarreled a great deal of the time. It 
wasn 't long before I found out that it was the girls who 
did most of the tale-bearing. No wonder, either! They 
weren't very busy in school, and they had nothing much 
to do at home except to listen and talk. Really, they 
hadn't any decent interest in life. Of course there was 



202 THE NEW EDUCATION 

no use in saying anything, but I felt that if I could get 
them busy at something they liked they would stop talk- 
ing. It wasn't enough to start them at dressmaking, 
either, but when I started in on hard, fancy work designs 
I had them. They made pretty clothes, embroidered 
them ; made lace and doilies. Most of the girls can pick 
up a new Irish-lace pattern from a fashion-book as easily 
as I can, and they are rabid for new patterns. The same 
girls who did most of the tale-bearing are busy at work, 
and I find them swapping patterns and recipes instead 
of stories." 

While the girls patch, darn, crochet, hem, knit, weave 
baskets, make garments and do the various kinds of * 'busy 
work, ' ' the boys clean the school yard, plant walnut trees 
— Mrs. Faulconer, the County Superintendent, is having 
the school children plant nut trees along all the pikes — ■ 
and do anything else which is not beneath their dignity. 
* ' They have no work benches, ' ' lamented Miss Belle, ' ' I 
hope they will get them soon, although there is really no 
place to put them. ' ' Indeed, in a little building packed 
with fifty children and the school-room furniture the 
space is narrow. 

Yet this little one-room building at Locust Grove has 
left such a mark on the community that when the County 
School Board recently decided to transfer Miss Belle 
to a larger school the member from her district promptly 
resigned, and refused to be placated until every other 
member of the board had apologized to him and promised 
to leave Miss Belle in his school. 

"We never saw the old gentleman mad before," said 
a neighbor. "But he certainly was mad then. He had 
watched Miss Belle's work grow, and knew what it had 
meant to the children ; so when they proposed to take her 
away he went right up in the air. ' ' 



OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 203 

VI Marguerite 

What wonder? He had seen the magic workings of 
a hand that felt the pulse, judged the symptoms, and 
prescribed a sure-to-cure remedy for a countryside full 
of ignorance, drunkenness, bitter hatreds and never-end- 
ing quarrels. Within a stone 's throw of his house he had 
seen the transformation in the life of a little girl named 
Marguerite. Since her birth she had lived in darkness, 
but into her desolate home Miss Belle had sent light. 

"You never saw a worse home," says Miss Belle. 
* ' Her mother was woefully ignorant of everything in the 
way of home-making. The children were wretchedly 
dressed. The house was barrenness itself — no shades, no 
curtains, no decorations of any kind. It was pathetic. 
When she came to school neither she nor her mother could 
sew a stitch. ' ' 

Marguerite, an apt girl with her fingers, eagerly 
learned the needlework lessons of the school. She taught 
her mother to sew, while she herself made portieres and 
curtains, lightening up the old home with a rare new 
beauty. 

Here again is Lillie, who is very slow at needlework 
and arithmetic, but who has put the family diet on a 
wholesome basis by learning to cook some of the most 
delicious, nourishing dishes. Her bread — the best in 
Fayette County — is light as a feather. Hannah comes 
back after leaving school to learn how to ply her needle. 
Until a year ago Christmas she could not sew a stitch; 
now her stitches are so neat as to be almost invisible. 
Mrs. Hawly, aroused to enthusiasm by her thirteen-year- 
old daughter, has come to school, learned plain and fancy 
sewing, and started to make her own and her daughtei^'s 
clothes. Everywhere are the marks of a teacher 's handi- 



204 THE NEW EDUCATION 

work stamped indelibly on the lives of her scholars and 
their families. Small wonder that the old gentleman on 
the board was loath to part with Miss Belle ! 

VII Winning Over the Families 

With supreme joy Miss Belle tells of her conquest of 
the fathers of her boys and girls — her family, as she calls 
it. ' ' The children were very poorly cared for, ' ' she says. 
''The fathers spent the money for whiskey, and the 
mothers lacked the means and the knowledge to clothe 
the. children better. Sometimes they were pitiful in their 
poor shoes and thin clothes. Well, sir, we got up a 
Christmas entertainment, and, except for one or two, the 
children wore the same clothes they had been coming to 
school in all winter — shabby, patched and dirty as some 
of them were. They stood up there, though, one and all, 
to do their turns and speak their pieces, and their fathers 
were ashamed. They saw their children in old clothes, 
and the children of some of the neighbors all fixed up, 
and they just couldn't stand it. 

' ' It surely did make a difference the next year. ' ' Miss 
Belle's cheery face broadened with a satisfied smile. 
' ' The men didn 't say a word — you know our men aren 't 
in the habit of saying very much — but they went to 
town themselves the day before the entertainment and 
came back with new dresses for the girls and new clothes 
for the boys. Of course some of them were so small 
they would scarcely go on, while others were miles 
big; but every one had something new and no one felt 
badly. 

' ' This Christmas, ' ' concluded Miss Belle, ' ' our enter- 
tainment packed the school-house, and «ome were turned 
away. Just to show you how crowded it was — there 
were twenty-four babies there. I was ready for them, 



OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 205 

though, with two pounds of stick candy; so whenever a 
baby squalled he got a stick of candy quick. ' ' 

Strange, good things have followed the visits of the 
mothers to the schools. They would never have come 
had it not been for the wonderful things which their 
children were learning with such untoward enthusiasm. 
One girl, who had been particularly successful with her 
needlework, brought her mother to school — a hard 
woman who had a standing quarrel with seven of her 
neighbors at that particular time. It took a little tact, 
but when the right moment arrived Miss Belle suggested 
that she pay a visit to a sick neighbor and offer to help. 
The woman went at last, found that it was a very pleas- 
ant thing on the whole to be friendly, and carried the 
glad tidings into her life, substituting kindness for her 
previous rule of incivility. To her surprise her enemies 
have all disappeared. 

The mothers, coming to school to talk over the work 
of their children, have for the first time seen one another 
at their best. Sitting over a friendly cup of tea, chat- 
ting about Jane's dress or Willie's lessons, they have 
learned the art of social intercourse. Slowly the lesson 
has come to them, until to-day there is not a woman in 
the neighborhood who is not on speaking terms with 
every one else, a situation undreamed of five years ago. 

Nine months in each year Miss Belle McCubbing holds 
her classes in the Locust Grove School, which stands on 
the Military Pike, seven miles outside of Lexington, Ken- 
tucky. '' Angels watch over that school," says Mrs. 
Faulconer. Doubtless these angels are the good angels 
of the community, for in six years the bitterness of 
neighborhood gossip and controversy has been replaced 
by a spirit of neighborly helpfulness. Boys and girls, 
doing Miss Belle's "busy work," fathers and mothers 



206 THE NEW EDUCATION 

learning from their children, have heaped upon Miss 
Belle's deserving head the peerless praise of a com- 
munity come to itself — regenerated in thought and act, 
turned from the wretchedness and desolation of the past 
to the light and civilization of the future, saved and 
blessed by the lives of a teacher and her children. 



CHAPTER XI 
WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 

I Fitting Schools to Needs 

This is the story of a school that was built to fit a 
town, and it begins with a hypothetical case. Suppose 
that there was a town — a prosperous town of some 2,247 
souls, set down in the middle of a well-to-do farming 
district. As for business, the town has a few industries 
and some stores; the countryside is engaged in general 
farming. Suppose that the school board of such a town 
should come to you and say: "We are looking for a 
school superintendent. Are you the one?" Suppose 
you said, ' ' Yes. ' ' How would you prove your point ? 

Out in Minnesota there is a town named Sleepy Eye, 
set down in a well-to-do farming district. At the head 
of the Sleepy Eye schools there is J. A. Cederstrom. 
Mr. Cederstrom has proved by a very practical demon- 
stration that he is ''the one." 

When Mr. Cederstrom took charge of the Sleepy Eye 
schools he found an excellent school plant, an intelligent 
community and a school system that was like the school 
system of every other up-to-date two-thousand-inhab- 
itant town in the Middle West. Before Mr. Cederstrom 
there lay a choice. He could continue the work exactly 
as it had always been carried on, improve the school 
machinery, and make a creditable showing at examina- 
tion time. That path looked like the path of least resist- 
ance. Mr. Cederstrom did not take it, however. In- 
stead he made up his mind that after measuring the com- 
munity and the children he would, to use his own words, 
''fit the work to their respective needs." 

207 



208 THE NEW EDUCATION 

"The work offered has been somewhat varied," Mr. 
Cederstrom explains. ''I have not attempted to follow 
any set course or outline of work made out by some one 
else who is not familiar with our conditions and needs. ' ' 

"Where does there exist a more admirable statement 
of the principle underlying the new education? This 
man, when given charge of a school plant, deliberately 
chose to make the school fit the needs of the community 
upon which the school was dependent for support. 
Oblivious of tradition he set about remodeling the school 
in the interest of its constituency. 

Sleepy Eye is located in a farming district. Many of 
the boys who come to the Sleepy Eye School will man- 
age farms when they are grown men, and many of the 
Sleepy Eye girls will marry farmers and manage them. 
Here were farmer men and farmer women in the mak- 
ing. What more natural than to organize a Department 
of Agriculture ? 

A Department of Agriculture in a school ? Yes, truly ; 
and a short winter course for farm boys and girls who 
could not come the year round, and a school experiment 
station with school farms for the children, and a live 
farmers' institute that met in the school and was fed 
and cared for by the Department of Domestic Science, 
and all sorts of courses built up around the needs of the 
children and of the community. 

II Getting the Janitor in Line 

As a result of this method of course-making the school 
janitor found himself on the instruction staff of the 
school. One day a couple of the short course boys were 
in the engine-room while the janitor was repairing a 
defective pipe in the heating plant. The boys lent a 
hand in the work; and one of them, having a practical 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 209 

turn of mind, suggested that he would like to learn more 
about pipe-fitting in order to install a water system on 
the farm at home. The janitor repeated the remark to 
Mr. Cederstrom, who called the boys out and had a talk 
with them regarding the possibilities of the plan. 

The outlook for the course was not bright. Every in- 
structor in the mechanical department was working on 
full time. Only one way out remained and that way 
led to the janitor. 

The janitor was a busy man during the day, but his 
evenings were comparatively free. After some parley- 
ing he agreed to give a course in elementary plumbing 
and steam-fitting on Tuesday and Thursday evenings 
at seven-thirty. So the boys came to school in the even- 
ing, and under the direction of the school janitor learned 
how to install a water system in their homes. Their 
work for the year consisted in making a model water 
system for a house, a barn and the other farm buildings. 
The materials for this course were picked up from the 
school's scrap-heap. 

Perhaps some people will not understand the spirit 
of it — getting the janitor in line to give a course in 
steam-fitting from the odds and ends that are found on 
the scrap-heap. Such a proceeding is unconventional 
in the extreme. But, on the other hand, here were boys 
who wished to know how they might go back and im- 
prove their homes. Who shall say that the imparting 
of such knowledge is not the business of a real school? 

Ill The Department of Agriculture 

Let us go back for a moment to the organization of the 
Department of Agriculture. The school at Sleepy Eye 
have available what every other school should have — 
five acres of tillable ground. This tract at Sleepy Eye 



210 THE NEW EDUCATION 

is devoted to tests and experimental work, to flower 
gardens and to individual school gardens — one for each 
child who applies. 

The experimental work and tests are carried on 
exactly as they would be at a state experiment station. 
In the section of Minnesota surrounding Sleepy Eye, 
corn is the great staple crop. Therefore on the demon- 
stration grounds of the Department of Agriculture, 
Independent School District No. 24, Sleepy Eye, Minne- 
sota, they are growing a number of plots of corn, each 
plot variously planted, fertilized, cultivated, and cared 
for, so that the children may learn at first-hand scien- 
tific methods of discovering the best kinds of crop, and 
the best ways of handling a crop in their own locality. 

The allotment of the school gardens carried with it 
instruction in engineering and in civics at the same time 
that the bonds between home and school were cemented. 
The part of the school land that was to be devoted to 
school gardens was turned over to the older boys, who 
surveyed it in exactly the same way that the United 
States government surveyed the homestead tracts. The 
plot was laid out in towns and ranges. The sections 
were staked and numbered. Then the children who 
wished to take up plots went into the newly surveyed 
territory, picked their plots, and filed an application 
with the land commissioner for a plot, stating the sec- 
tion, town and range. After that a line formed and the 
plots (20x20 feet) were allotted. No child was per- 
mitted to take up an allotment unless he had the endorse- 
ment of a parent or guardian. The form on which this 
endorsement was secured was as follows : 



Name Grade , 

Sec Town Range 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 211 

APPLICATION FOR LAND IN PUBLIC SCHOOL GARDEN, 
DEPT. OF AGR., SLEEPY EYE HIGH SCHOOL 

''It is assumed that the parent or guardian who en- 
dorses this application will co-operate with the school 
authorities and have the applicant care for and weed 
said land during the growing season, and devote at least 
two and a half hours each week this summer to the 
agricultural work as may be directed or required by the 
Director of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Haw. 

"I hereby apply for Sec Town 

Range in the Public School Garden of Sleepy 

Eye High School, and will cultivate and care for same 
as may be directed by the proper authorities, and will 
keep a careful record of the returns therefrom and re- 
port same on or before Oct. 20, 1911. I will do the 
additional agricultural work that may be directed as 
indicated above. 

Applicant. 

Endorsed by Parent or Guardian. ' ' 

The form carried on its opposite side statements show- 
ing the character of crop and its value, the amount paid 
for seeds and an itemized statement of the returns. The 
school gardens proved an admirable success. The chil- 
dren had learned the details of a great historical event 
in their own state — the giving out of free land ; the boys 
had conducted a miniature survey; rivalry had been 
developed in the competition over plots; the gardens, 
laid out side by side, served as a splendid object lesson 
in quality of work ; no boy or girl could allege a teacher 's 
unfairness from an untilled, weedy plot; the parents 
were made to feel that the school was doing something 
practical for their children ; the children were taught a 



212 THE NEW EDUCATION 

simple form of accounting and cost-keeping; and, best 
of all, they were made to feel their citizenship fti the 
school. ' 

The Department of Agriculture has, in addition to 
its experimental farm, a well-equipped laboratory, in 
which tests and experiments are carried on. Sleepy Eye 
is located in a dairy section; therefore one of the chief 
functions of this laboratory has been the testing of milk. 
Any farmer may bring milk samples and have the Bab- 
cock test applied to determine the percentage of butter 
fat which an individual cow is yielding. 

IV A Short Course for Busy People 

In the neighborhood of Sleepy Eye, as in many other 
places, there are many boys and girls who cannot attend 
school throughout the year, but who would welcome a 
chance to go to school in the winter months. Agricul- 
tural colleges have recognized this need by the organiza- 
tion of ' ' short courses ' ' during the winter months. 
Only a few children can go to college, however. Lack 
of preparation and lack of funds compel them to remain 
at home. It was for them that the school at Sleepy Eye 
organized a short course like that given in the agricul- 
tural colleges, extending from the end of November to 
the middle of March. Of the pupils attending this 
course, some of the boys are as old as thirty-seven, and 
some of the girls as young as fifteen ; yet all come, eager 
to find out some of the things which the school has to 
teach them. 

The agricultural work of the short course centered 
around the agricultural problems of the Brown County 
Farm. Planting, milk and cream testing, work in seed 
testing and germination, and treatment of seeds for 
fungus growths, corn judging, and similar topics cov- 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 213 

ered the work of the term. The short course boys had 
already learned many lessons in the practical school of 
farm work. The school at Sleepy Eye offered them in 
addition the knowledge which science has recently ac- 
cumulated regarding the work of the farm. 

As the successful farmer must be a trained mechanic, 
the short course laid great stress on manual training. 
The boys were taught how to handle and care for tools, 
how to frame a building, how to make eveners, hayracks, 
watering troughs, wagon boxes, and similar useful farm 
articles. In the blacksmith shop the simpler problems 
in forging were covered, including the making of hooks, 
clevises, cold chisels and other small tools. 

While the boys were engaged in agricultural and 
mechanical work the girls took domestic science. In 
addition to the elementary work in cooking and sewing 
there were advanced courses in dress designing, so 
planned as to prepare a girl to work out her own pat- 
terns and make up her own materials. 

Let no one suppose that the short course neglected 
academic work. Indeed, it was originally intended to 
enable boys and girls who felt too big for the local 
school, or who had no time to take the entire term 
there, to review common school subjects. The courses 
in industrial work, in agriculture and in domestic 
science were offered in addition to these regular school 
studies. 

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The boys 
and girls who take the short course for the first year 
come back in considerable numbers to take a second and 
a third year of work during the winter months. The 
short course is a success, because it gives the boys and 
girls who take it training and knowledge which they 
would not otherwise acquire. 



214 THE NEW EDUCATION 

V Letting the Boys Do It 

The school at Sleepy Eye needed a farm building on 
the school farm. The short course boys and some of 
the older boys in the school were anxious to learn. 
What more natural procedure than for the school to 
buy the lumber and have the boys do the work ? Exactly 
this proceeding was followed, and the pupils erected 
the building which they needed to carry on the applied 
work of the school. 

The mechanical work of the school is splendidly or- 
ganized. First of all, the pupils built a large part of 
the equipment themselves. Five simple forges, made 
by the students of pineboards and concrete, form an 
excellent shop equipment, besides giving the boys who 
did the work an inkling of the ease with* which a forge 
can be erected in connection with the tool-house on the 
farm. The boys built a turning lathe, on which the 
wood turning of the school is done. Besides the shop- 
work there is a well-organized course in mechanical 
drawing. The whole department is prepared to teach 
boys, particularly farm boys, some of the things which 
they will most need in the mechanical work on the farms. 

The mechanical courses are open to the boys in the 
grades, as well as to the high school and the short course 
pupils. The work is graded, and may be followed 
through the high school course. 

VI A Look at the Domestic Science 

While the boys are in the shops the girls are occupied 
with domestic science. A well-equipped laboratory and 
sewing-room furnish the basis' for some thorough work. 
The Domestic Science Department is one to which Mr. 
Cederstrom points with justifiable pride. "Of all my 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 215 

constructive work since coming here, ' ' he says, ' ' I prob- 
ably take my greatest pride in our Domestic Science 
Department, where elementary and advanced work is 
offered in cooking and in household economy." 

Because the space in the school was small, and the 
demand for instruction large, Mr. Cederstrom planned 
the domestic science tables himself, and superintended 
their building. Again the effectiveness of the school's 
work is shown by its results. With the modest equip- 
ment which the funds and space available provided, the 
girls in the Domestic Science Department each year 
serve a dinner to the farmers and farmers' wives at- 
tending the annual farmers' institute held in the school 
in February. On one occasion the department baked 
almost half a cord of bread, roasted one hundred and 
forty pounds of beef, and fed five hundred and seven- 
teen persons at one dinner. 

The sewing work includes a complete course in dress- 
making. Students are required to make patterns from 
pictures selected in fashion magazines. These patterns 
are then used in cutting out the garments, which the 
girls themselves make up. 

Each girl in the High School is required to take at 
least one year each of cooking and of sewing. These 
courses occupy five periods a week. An additional year 
in each course is optional. Most of the girls eagerly 
elect it. Mr. Cederstrom takes a very practical view of 
such educational matters. ''Our girls like the domestic 
science work," he says. ''They take as much pride in 
bringing to my office a good loaf of bread, or a well-pre- 
pared dish of vegetables or meat as they do in being able 
to give a perfect demonstration of a theorem in 
geometry, or a perfect conjugation or declension of a 
Latin word. Possibly ten years from now they may 



216 THE NEW EDUCATION 

have more demand upon their ability to prepare a square 
meal for a hungry life companion, or to cut out a dress 
or apron for a younger member of the family than they 
will have need of doing some of the other things which 
I have just mentioned. ' ' 

They do not teach domestic science for its own sake 
out in Sleepy Eye; they see farther ahead than that. 
Mr. Cederstrom is making his work practical, because, 
as he says, ''We are anxious to do what little we can 
toward making our girls more efficient and capable as 
housekeepers, wives, and possibly as mothers." 

VII How It Works Out 

There are two questions that naturally arise : First, 
what is the effect of this work on the children ? Second, 
what is its effect on the farmers ? Both questions must 
be answered briefly, though the answers to both might 
be followed out through pages of illustrative detail. 

The children like the school at Sleepy Eye. The boys 
and girls come early and stay late. The school doors 
open at eight o'clock and are not closed until dark. 
There are always pupils there from the beginning to the 
end of that period. The children are not interested in 
the applied work alone. Their interest in that has led 
them very often to an interest in some of the academic 
studies toward which they had no particular inclination. 

The homes in Sleepy Eye are also interested in the 
school. As one woman remarked : ' ' My girls like to 
do work about the house now; they never did before.'' 
School work which gives girls a new desire and a new 
viewpoint on the work in the home is a step, and a long 
one, toward building sounder homes and stronger family 
ties. There are some Sleepy Eye homes in which the 
interest of the boys in the school shops has led their 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 217 

parents to buy benches and tools which the children may 
use at home. 

The school at Sleepy Eye has interested the farmers. 
It has persuaded them that high grade seed is better 
than mongrel seed. Consequently the farmers are shell- 
ing more bushels of corn to the acre planted. The school 
has persuaded the farmers that well-bred cattle are more 
profitable than mongrel cattle. Consequently the farm- 
ers are raising the standard of their herds. When the 
farmers come into Sleepy Eye they go to the school. 
Perhaps they have milk to be tested; perhaps they are 
looking for suggestions regarding soil or blight ; perhaps 
they want to know the latest facts about the scale or 
rust ; perhaps they want some advice about farm imple- 
ments. In any case they go to the school. 

The farmers have been led to the school through the 
children. The boys have gone home to their fathers with 
suggestions and improvements of inestimable value in 
the management of the farm. The girls have gone home 
to their mothers with practical ideas on the running of 
the household. These demonstrations of school efficiency 
have done more than argument or persuasion ever could 
hope to do in convincing the fathers and mothers of the 
usefulness of the school. 

VIII Theoretical and Practical 

The work in mechanics seems to interfere in no essen- 
tial particular with the regular academic work of the 
school. The boys and girls are interested and enthusi- 
astic. That counts for a great deal. Then, too, boys 
and girls come to school for the mechanical work who 
would not come at all if the mechanical work were not 
there. The academic work which such boys take is clear 
gain. Through the mechanical work many pupils be- 



218 THE NEW EDUCATION 

come interested in the school, and the school means, for 
all pupils, academic as well as applied work. 

''We do not discount those parts of an education that 
were once the sum total of the work in every high 
school," Mr. Cederstrom says. "They are all offered 
and taken by the students. We are trying to give in 
addition to these academic branches the kind of educa- 
tion which will appeal to the children as being of a 
common-sense order." There is in the high school a 
Latin Course, a Scientific Course, beside the Agricul- 
tural Course and the Industrial Course. All of the 
students are required to take this academic work. Many, 
in addition, take the industrial and agricultural work, 
even when they do not receive credit in their academic 
course. Each high school student is allowed two periods 
a day in laboratory work, shop-work, or some other form 
of applied education. In addition to those periods, the 
students may work in the shops or laboratory after 
school, if they please. Many of them get their applied 
education in that way. 

How great is the fire that a little spark kindles ! It 
was more than a thousand miles away that I first heard 
of the school at Sleepy Eye. It happened in this way. 
The clock had scarcely announced that it was high noon 
when a group of men drew their chairs up to a dinner 
table generously loaded with country hotel fare. There 
were two school directors in this happen-so party, a 
carter, a salesman, a lawyer, a farmer and two teachers, 
who talked with a professional twang. The salesman 
listened impatiently to the educational clap-trap, watch- 
ing for an opening between phrases. When at last the 
loophole appeared: 

' ' Gentlemen, ' ' said he, ' ' you 're interested in schools ? 
Then you ought to see some real schools. Did you ever 



WIDE-AWAKE SLEEPY EYE 219 

go to a school to listen to a phonograph ? ' ' Then, turn- 
ing to the farmers : ' ' Did you ever go to school to get 
your horses shod? You go to school for both in Sleepy 
Eye, Minnesota. They're the greatest schools I have 
ever seen. They run from seven in the morning till 
eight at night, and accommodate every kid that wants 
an education. Gentlemen, if you want to see real schools 
go to Sleepy Eye." 



CHAPTEE XII 

THE SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 

I A Dream of Empire 

A keen Atlanta business man leaned forward on his 
chair and spoke eagerly. ''Yes, sir," he exclaimed, 
"the world is ours. We have the biggest, finest batch 
of undeveloped resources in the country — perhaps on 
the planet. Iron, coal, stone, timber, power — our hills 
are full of them, so full that we have never even inven- 
toried our treasure-house. Our possibilities are beyond 
the power of words, and we ' ve got to live up to them. ' ' 

This man knew Georgia and the South. He had 
helped, and still is helping to convert the iron, coal, 
timber, and water-power into Southern prosperity. He 
was still unsatisfied. 

''The trouble with us is, we can't go fast enough," 
he admitted. ''Do you know why? Do you know the 
biggest burden we have to carry — the most determined 
enemy we have to fight? Well, sir, its's ignorance — 
the ignorance of the common man about his farm or his 
trade ; the ignorance of the business man about outside 
things ; the ignorance of the teachers who are supposed 
to enlighten us." He leaned forward again. "That 
sounds strong, doesn't it? But it's gospel." 

I reminded him of the rapidity with which the South 
was forging ahead in its educational activities. He 
threw his head back proudly. "Of course," he cried, 
"the experiment stations, the colleges, the high schools, 

220 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 221 

the club movement, and all that — of course we're 
going ahead. I'm not speaking of that. My point is 
that we must wake up to two things. First of all, we 
must never make the mistakes that you did in the 
North when you built up your educational system. 
That means no pedantry, or classical snobbery. We 
mustn't go that way. Our way is plain though. I 
see it more clearly every time I think the matter over 
— we must train the intelligence of the Southern 
people." 

He continued, in his enthusiastic mood. "Yes, there 
is a great future for the South. Its resources make a 
future possible ; but unless those resources are intel- 
ligently used, our prosperity will not go very deep, 
or reach very far. We must take the people with 
us." 

This man's view typifies the educational vision that 
is sweeping over the South. ''We must take the people 
with us, ' ' he said. There is nothing novel in the idea ; 
but coming as it did from a representative business 
man, it carried weight and conviction. 

Another thing he said in the same connection en- 
forced his argument. "They talk about the race prob- 
lem in the South," he said. "That is, the old genera- 
tion does. We younger men are not so much concerned 
about the race problem as we are concerned about 
efficiency in industry and in agriculture. The races are 
here to stay; we cannot change that if we would. 
Meanwhile, all of us, whites as well as blacks, are 
slovenly in our farming, indifferent in our business 
transactions, and hopelessly behind in our methods of 
conducting affairs. From top to bottom we need 
trained intelligence. That, more than anything else, 
will solve the South 's problems." 



222 THE NEW EDUCATION 

II Finding the Way 

The step is a sliort one from a vision of trained 
intelligence to a demand for effective education. 
Throughout the South, the will to progress is every- 
where in evidence, and with unerring accuracy, one 
community after another is turning to this as the way. 

There is no Southern city in which the agitation for 
increased educational activity is not being pushed with 
vigor and intensity. On all hands there appears the 
result of a conviction that the only means by which 
the effectiveness of the South can be maintained and 
increased, lie along the path of increased educational 
opportunities. The South, if it is to fulfill the great- 
ness of its promise, must remodel its educational sys- 
tem in the interests of a larger South, as the West has 
remodeled its educational system in the interest of a 
larger West. The notable State universities of the 
Middle and Far West, the Normal Schools, the preva- 
lent system of education, have been felt, and are now 
being felt, in the progressive, efficient. Western popu- 
lation. Nothing less than a generally educated public 
could have made the West in the brief years that have 
elapsed since it was a wilderness. Nothing save gen- 
eral education can make the resources of the South 
yield up their greatest advantage to the Southern 
people. 

The time for traditional formalism has passed in the 
South, as it has passed in every other progressive com- 
munity. Whatever the needs of the community may 
be, those needs must be met through some form of 
public education. In the South the most pressing need 
appears in the demand for intelligent farming. For 
decades the tenant farmers, largely negroes, cultivated 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 223 

their farms as tlieir fathers had cultivated. They 
raised cotton because the raising of cotton offered the 
path of least resistance. Farm animals were scarce, 
because the farm animals only came with surplus cash, 
and surplus cash was scarce indeed in districts 
where the tenant farmers lived through the year on 
the credit obtained from the prospective cotton crops. 
There was little corn raised, because the people did 
not understand the need for raising corn, nor did 
they realize the financial possibilities of the Southern 
com crop. In a word, the agricultural South lacked 
the knowledge which modern scientific agriculture has 
brought. 

The past generation has seen a revolution in South- 
ern agriculture, because of the revolution which has 
occurred in Southern agricultural education. Led by 
the experiment stations and universities, the South 
has undertaken to reorganize its system of living from 
the land. 

The Atlanta banker fully realized the need for 
culture. He was himself a cultured gentleman; but 
he also saw that before the people of the South could 
have culture, they must have an economic system 
directed with sufficient intelligence to supply the neces- 
saries of life, which must always be taken for granted 
before the possibilities of culture are realized. Cul- 
tural education comes after, and not before, education 
for intelligent and direct vocational activity. 

During the educational revolution of the past 
twenty-five years, no section of the country has thrown 
itself into the foreground of educational progress with 
more vigor and with greater earnestness and zeal than 
that displayed in the South. In certain directions the 
South has proved a leader in the inauguration and 



224 THE NEW EDUCATION 

administration of new activities. In other directions 
the Southern States have followed actively and ener- 
getically. 

A traveler through the New South stumbles unavoid- 
ably upon countless illustrations of the part which 
modern education is playing in Southern life. Indi- 
viduals, families, communities, are being re-made by 
the new education. 

Ill Jem's Father 

Jem wasn't a good boy, but he was interested in his 
school. He was one of those fortunate boys who lived 
in a county that had been possessed by the corn club 
idea, and the corn club was the thing which had given 
Jem his school interest. 

Jem never took to studies. Each year he had told 
his mother that "there weren't no use in goin' back 
to that there school again." Persistently she had 
sent him back, until one year when Jem found a reason 
for going. 

A new teacher came to Jem's school — a young man 
fresh from normal school, full of enthusiasm, energy, 
and new ideas. The boys felt from the start that he 
was their friend, and before many weeks had elapsed, 
the community began to feel his presence. This new 
teacher was particularly enthusiastic over the "club 
idea." "We must get the boys and girls doing some- 
thing together" he kept saying to his classes. 

The year wore on, but interest in the school did not 
flag, because all through the winter months there were 
entertainments, parents' meetings, literary meetings, 
spelling bees, reading hours, and other evening activ- 
ities. In fact, the time came when there was a light 
in the school-house three or four nights in each week. 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 225 

Toward spring the new teacher began to push the 
*^club idea." He started with the boys, and, as luck 
would have it, picked out Jem. "Jem," he said one 
day, ' ' I want you to stay after school, I want to speak 
to you a minute." Jem stayed, not knowing exactly 
what was coming. "When the rest of the pupils had 
tumbled out of the school door, and disappeared along 
the muddy road, the teacher and Jem sat down together. 

"Jem," said the teacher, "we ought to have a com 
club in this school." 

Jem looked up doggedly, but gave no sign of interest 
or enthusiasm. 

* ' You see, ' ' the teacher said, " it 's this way. Farming 
isn't all that it might be around here. People raise 
things the way they have always been raised. Our 
county superintendent has an idea. He proposes to 
teach the farmers in this county how to raise corn." 

Jem looked skeptical. ' ' Are you to do the teaching ? ' ' 
he asked. 

"No," was the answer, "you are." 

"I?" said Jem. 

"Yes," said the teacher, ^'you and the other boys 
in the school." 

Jem scratched his head. "I ain't never taught no 
one nothing in my life," he commented. 

" It 's this way, ' ' the teacher went on. ' ' Up at Wash- 
ington and out at the State College they have been doing 
a lot of thinking and working with corn. They found, 
for instance, that if you pick seed corn carefully, you 
get a better crop than if you are careless in seed selec- 
tion. They have also found that if you follow certain 
rules about planting and cultivation you get a better 
crop. For years the men at the Experiment Station and 
at Washington talked about these things in Farmers' 



226 THE NEW EDUCATION 

Bulletins. They established experiment farms, and dem- 
onstration farms, too. Lately they have been doing some- 
thing more, and something which I think is better than 
anything so far — they have decided to have the boys 
teach their fathers how to raise com." 

**Do you mean to say," asked Jem, "that I could 
teach Dad anything about corn-raisin'?" 

' ' Yes, ' ' said the teacher, ' ' you can, and, what is more, 
you will, won't you?" 

''Well," said Jem, ''I dunno." 

''Here is what we have to do," said the teacher. 
"This year the county superintendent is going to offer 
prizes for the boy with the best acre of corn. He sends 
out rules. You have to plough a certain way, plant a 
certain way, and cultivate a certain way. If you do 
not follow the rules you are not allowed to stay in the 
contest. Now I'll tell you what I want to do. The 
boys in this school are as smart, if not smarter, than 
the boys in any other school in the country; so I guess 
it is up to us to get some of those prizes right here at 
home. ' ' 

Jem was visibly interested. "Money prizes?" he 
asked. 

"Yes, money prizes," said the teacher. "The first 
prize will be fifty dollars." 

Jem's eyes opened wide. "I'm in for that," he said 
with conviction. 

That night, when Jem sat down to supper, he broached 
the corn proposition to his father. 

"Shucks," his father exclaimed. "You raise an acre 
of corn? Why you wouldn't get twenty-five bushels!" 

"Twenty-five," said Jem, contemptuously. "I'd get 
a hundred.'* 

' ' A hundred, ' ' said his father. ' ' Here, look here, boy, 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 227 

I have been farming this land for thirty odd years, 
and the best I ever done on an acre of corn was seventy 
bushels. I'll tell you what, though," he added conclu- 
sively, ''this here talk about corn clubs makes me tired. 
You and your hundred bushels! I was looking over 
the paper when it came in this noon, and I saw a piece 
about a chap over by Southport with over a hundred 
bushels to the acre. Do you know what I'm goin' to 
do tonight? I'm goin' to write that editor a letter, and 
tell him that any paper that publishes lies like that 
ain't fit for my family to see. This year's subscription 
ain't run out, but they don't need to send me the rest. 
I'll get a paper somewhere else." 

Despite home opposition, Jem persisted and prevailed. 
His father gave him an acre grudgingly, but it was a 
good acre. And when, following the rules which he and 
the other boys who had agreed to enter the contest 
read over with the teacher, he disked his land and 
ploughed his narrow, deep furrows, he listened, not 
without misgivings, to the remarks which his elder 
brother passed at his expense. 

''Say, Jem," this brother remarked, "you have spent 
three times as much time on that acre as any acre of 
com raised in this county was ever worth. Are you 
diggin' graves for 'possums?" 

When, later in the season, Jem cultivated with per- 
sistent regularity, he was forced to listen to similar 
comments. Jem wasn't good at repartee; so he said 
nothing; but, sustained by the encouragement of the 
new teacher, who came to see his acre every week, Jem 
followed the rules to the letter. 

He had his reward at harvest time. When the ears 
first set it became apparent that Jem had a good crop. 
As they developed, the goodness of the crop became 



228 THE NEW EDUCATION 

more manifest; but when the acre had been harvested, 
put through the sheller and bagged, and Jem had stowed 
in his pocket a certificate of '' ninety-six bushels on one 
acre," it was time for some explanations. 

''Jem," said his father at the supper table on the 
evening of that memorable day when Jem's com went 
through the sheller, and his certificate showed ninety- 
six bushels, ''I wrote a letter to that editor, and sent 
him next year's subscription in advance." 

IV Club Life MiUtant 

The experience of Jem's father has been duplicated 
many times by parents and communities during the past 
ten years of club growth in the South. The school, 
working through the children, has educated fathers, 
mothers, villages, and whole counties. 

All of the agencies of government, — ^local, State, and 
national, — have cooperated to make the children's clubs 
one of the leading agencies in developing that trained 
intelligence which is so great an asset in the prosperity 
of any community. Thanks to the tireless efforts of 
men like William H. Smith, the children's clubs have 
become one of the most aggressive factors in educating 
rural communities to higher standards of efficiency. 
There are many kinds of clubs — com clubs, potato 
clubs, tomato clubs, pig clubs. Anything which the 
children can raise is a legitimate object of club activity. 
The work in the South started with corn clubs. 

The corn-club idea in Mississippi grew out of an edu- 
cational experience of Professor William H. Smith.^ 
For years Professor Smith had taught, in a mildly pro- 
gressive way, the time-honored subjects which were in- 

1 Now State Superintendent. See an article ' ' ' Corn-Club ' 
Smith," P. C. Macfarlane, Collier's Weekly, May 17, 1913, p. 19. 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 229 

eluded in the study-course of the rural school. Two of 
Professor Smith's students, a boy of twenty and a girl 
of seventeen, left school ; and they left, as the boy told 
Professor Smith very frankly, because the school taught 
them very little that would be of use later on in the 
work which they would be called upon to do. This boy 
expected to grow cotton ; the girl expected to marry the 
boy, manage his domestic affairs and attend to the many 
duties which fall to the lot of women on a farm. 

When he left school, the boy put it to Professor 
Smith in this way: ''I am goin' to be a farmer. I 
ain't fitted to be nothing else, and book learnin' ain't 
helpin' me none. It's just a waste of time. I've got to 
clear land and work it into a farm. If I was goin' to 
be a bookkeeper or an engineer, or somethin', what you 
are teach.in' me here might help; but I can't remember 
that I have ever learned a thing since I got the hang 
how to figure the interest on a mortgage, that will be of 
any account to me on a farm. Almost all the boys has 
got to be a farmer like me. You know, professor, it 
appears to me like these schools for the people ought 
to be teachin' the children of the people how to make 
a livin' on the farm — ^how to make life better and 
easier, instead of just makin' us plum disgusted with 
ourselves. ' ' 

This experience, standing out among a multitude of 
similar experiences, led Professor Smith to an interest 
in some form of educational work that would help boys 
and girls in their lives on the farm. The outcome of 
his thinking and experimenting, combined with the 
thinking and experimenting of many another capable 
educational leader, is the club idea for boys and girls 
alike. 

There was a real need for the corn club. For the year 



230 THE NEW EDUCATION 

1899 the total corn area in Alabama was 2,743,060 acres. 
On these acres the farmers secured an average of 12.7 
bushels per acre. Ten years later, in 1909, the total 
acreage had decreased to 2,572,092, and the per acre 
yield had decreased to 11.9 bushels per acre. Here was 
a decrease of 170,968 acres in corn ; of 4,367,310 bushels 
in the corn crop ; and of .8 of a bushel in the average 
yield per acre. The boys' corn club movement was 
started in Alabama in 1909. That year two hundred 
and sixty-five boys were enrolled. The average per acre 
yield of com in the State was 11.9 bushels. The next 
year the enrollment of boys reached twenty-one hun- 
dred; the total yield increased more than sixty per 
cent. ; and the average number of bushels per acre rose 
to eighteen. The figures for 1911 and 1912 show an 
increase, though less extensive, in the total acreage and 
the total yield of corn for each year. 

Southern land will grow corn. Properly treated, it 
will better a yield of twelve bushels per acre, -^Ye, ten, 
and even fifteen-fold. The leaders of Southern agricul- 
tural education knew this. They kiiew, furthermore, 
that the betterment could never be brought about until 
the farmers were convinced that it was possible. How 
could they be shown? The Farmers' Bulletin had a 
place ; the experiment farm had a place ; but if it were 
only possible to make every farm an experiment farm! 
The way lay through the boys. They could be in- 
duced to organize miniature experiments in scores of 
farms in every county, and then the farmers would see ! 
Backed by a carefully worked out organization, the 
authorities set out with the deliberate purpose of edu- 
cating the farmer through his son. If his corn yield 
was low, he would learn how to get a larger yield. If 
he raised no com, he would learn of the spot-cash value 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 231 

of corn. Boys were organized into clubs; directions 
were given; prizes were offered, and the boys went to 
work with a will. For the most part they took one acre. 

When compared to the yield on surrounding acres, the 
corn crops secured by the boys are little short of phe- 
nomenal. In Pike County, Alabama, where the number 
of boys engaging in corn club contests increased from 
one in 1910 to two hundred and seventy in 1912, the 
average number of bushels per acre grown by the boys 
rose from 50.5 to 85.3. In the entire State there were 
one hundred and thirty-seven boys who made over a 
hundred bushels per acre each in 1911. The average per 
acre for each of these boys was one hundred and twenty- 
seven bushels, and the total profit on their corn crop 
was $12,500. 

Records made by individual boys through the Southern 
States run very high. Claude McDonald, of Hamer, 
S. C, raised 210f bushels at a cost of 33.3^ a bushel. 
Junius Hill, of Attalla, Ala., raised 212J bushels. Ben 
Leath, of Kensington, Ga., raised 214f bushels. John 
Bowen, of Grenada, Miss., raised 221J bushels. Eber A. 
Kimbrough, Alexander City, Ala., raised 224f bushels; 
and Bebbie Beeson, Monticello, Miss., raised 227iV 
bushels.^ These boys were all State prize winners. 

There are several things worthy of note about these 
record yields. Practically all of the high yields were 
made on deeply ploughed, widely separated rows. The 
record made by Bennie Beeson (227iV bushels, at a cost 
of fourteen cents per bushel) was secured on dark, up- 
land soil, with a clay sub-soil, ploughing to a depth of ten 
inches, rows three feet apart, hills six inches apart, with 

1 United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant 
Industry, Kesults of Boys' Demonstration Work in Corn Clubs 
in 1911, Washington, May, 1912, p. 4. 



/ 



232 THE NEW EDUCATION 

ten cultivations. Beeson used 5J tons of manure and 
eight dollars' worth of other fertilizer on his acre. The 
seed corn was New Era. Bamie Thomas, who grew 225 
bushels on rich, sandy loam, ploughed nine inches, 
planted his rows three and one-half feet apart, and 
kept the hills ten inches apart. He cultivated six times, 
and selected his own seed from the field. Many of the 
boys making the fine records developed and selected 
their own seed. One boy, with an acre yield of 124.9 
bushels, cleared six hundred and ninety-five dollars, 
counting prizes. Another boy, with a yield of 97f 
bushels, reports that his father's yield was thirty 
bushels. John Bowen, with a yield of 221J bushels, 
reports the yield on nearby acres as forty bushels. 
Arthur Hill, with 180f bushels, reports the nearby yields 
as twenty bushels. 

Such figures, uncertified, would challenge the credu- 
lity of the uninitiated. The land on which these record 
yields were secured had been raising twenty, forty, and 
fifty bushels of corn to the acre. Over great sections, 
the per acre average was well under twenty. Into this 
desolation of agricultural inefficiency, a few thousand 
school boys entered. Under careful supervision and 
proper guidance, with little additional expenditure of 
money or of time, they produced results wholly unbeliev- 
able to the old-time farmer. Yet he saw the crop, husked, 
and watched it through the sheller. There was no magic 
and no chicanery. He had learned a lesson. 

The records cited above are exceptionally high. There 
were hundreds of others almost equally good. ' ' Twenty- 
one Georgia club members from the seventh congres- 
sional district alone grew 2,641 bushels at an average 
cost of 23 cents per bushel ; 19 boys in Gordon County, 
Georgia^ average 90 bushels, 10 of them making 1,058 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 233 

bushels. The 10 boys who stood highest in Georgia 
averaged 169.9 bushels and made a net profit of more 
than $100 each, besides prizes won. In Alabama 100 
boys average 97 bushels at an average cost of 27 cents. 
In Monroe County, Alabama, 25 boys averaged 78 
bushels. In Yazoo County, Mississippi, 21 boys aver- 
aged 111.6 bushels at an average cost of 19.7 cents. In 
Lee County, Mississippi, 17 boys averaged 82 bushels 
at an average cost of 21 cents. Sixty-five boys in Missis- 
sippi averaged 109.9 bushels at an average cost of 25 
cents. Twenty Mississippi boys averaged 140.6 bushels 
at an average cost of 23 cents. Ninety-two boys in 
Louisiana grew 5,791 bushels on 92 acres; 10 of these 
boys had above 100 bushels each, although the weather 
conditions were very unfavorable in that State. In 
North Carolina 100 boys averaged 99 bushels. In the 
same State 432 boys averaged 63 bushels. In Buncombe 
County, North Carolina, 10 boys averaged 88 bushels. 
In Sussex County, Virginia, 16 boys averaged 82 bushels. 
Fifteen boys in the vicinity of Memphis, Tenn., where 
the business men contributed about $3,000 to aid the 
work, averaged 127.4 bushels at an average cost of 28 
cents per bushel. Many other records in other States 
were equally good in view of the fact that a drought 
prevailed very generally throughout the South in 1911.^ 

Such returns challenge the attention of the most hide- 
bound. These boys got results that exceeded anything 
that had ever been heard of in their communities. The 
old folks who had scoffed; the wise-acres whose advice 
was not taken; and the "I told you so" farmers who 
had uttered their predictions, all stood aside, while the 
boys, pointer in hand, taught their respective communi- 
ties one of the best lessons they had ever learned. 

1 Op. cit., pp. 5-6. 



234 THE NEW EDUCATION 

V Canning Clubs 

Parallel with the boys' corn clubs are the girls' can- 
ning clubs. If the boys could grow corn (in a number 
of cases the corn contests were won by girls), why might 
it not be possible to have the girls do something along 
parallel lines? The idea found expression in the girls' 
tomato clubs and similar organizations. During 1910, 
three hundred and twenty-five girls were enrolled in 
such clubs in Virginia and South Carolina. Dr. Knapp 
and his fellow workers decided that one-tenth of an acre 
would be enough for a good garden. Each girl was 
urged to plant some other kind of vegetable in addition 
to her tomatoes, and to can surplus fruit. In 1911, 
more than three thousand girls, in eight different States, 
had joined clubs and planted their gardens. By 1912 
the number had grown to twenty-three thousand girls 
in twelve States. Many of the girls put up more than 
five hundred quart cans of tomatoes from their plots, 
besides ketchup, pickles, chow-chow, preserves, and other 
products. Quite a number of girls put up more than a 
thousand quart cans, and one girl put up fifteen hun- 
dred quart cans. Some of the girls, in addition to the 
prizes, had a net profit of as much as a hundred dollars 
on their gardens. 

The United States Bureau of Plant Industry sets 
forth the object of the girls' demonstration, work as 
follows : 

"(1) To encourage rural families to provide purer 
and better food at a lower cost, and utilize the surplus 
and otherwise waste products of the orchard and garden, 
and make the poultry yard an effective part of the farm 
economy. 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 235 

(2) To stimulate interest and wholesome cooperation 
among members of the family in the home. 

(3) To provide some means by which girls may earn 
money at home, and, at the same time, get the education 
and viewpoint necessary for the ideal farm life. 

(4) To open the way for practical demonstrations in 
home economics. 

(5) To furnish earnest teachers a plan for aiding 
their pupils and helping their communities. ' ' ^ 

VI Recognition Day for Boys and Girls 

The most astonishing thing about the club activity is 
the recognition which it has won wherever it has been 
worked out on an extensive basis. The reason for this 
general recognition is quite obvious, and its effect is no 
less stimulating. 

Public officials and business men have vied with one 
another in their efforts to reward the winners of county 
and State club contests. The same bulletin which re- 
cords the astonishing figures on corn yields, tells about 
the things that were done for the 56,840 boys who were 
members of com clubs. Fifty-two Georgia boys received 
diplomas signed by the governor of the State and other 
officials, for producing more than a hundred bushels per 
acre each, at an average cost of less than thirty cents 
per bushel. Business men and citizens generally sub- 
scribed liberally money, free railroad transportation, 
and trips to State capitals. In 1911 the total value of 
the prizes offered in the South to the boys' corn clubs 
approximated fifty thousand dollars. In Oklahoma, one 
thousand dollars in gold was offered to the one hundred 
and twenty boys making the best record in that State. 

1 U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry, 
Girls' Demonstration Work, Washington, January, 1913, pp. 1-2. 



236 THE NEW EDUCATION 

The State prize winners were sent to Washington for 
a week, where they were received at the "White House 
by the President, and at the Capitol by the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives. They were presented 
with special cards of admission to the Senate and House 
of Representatives, and, when visiting Congress, they 
were presented to their Senators and Congressmen. By 
special invitation these distinguished visitors appeared 
before the Committee on Agriculture at the House of 
Representatives. They also visited the office of the 
Secretary of Agriculture. They were photographed, 
and large diplomas bearing the seal of the Department 
and the signature of the Secretary were awarded to 
them. 

One does not wonder at the widespread recognition 
accorded these boys, in view of the fact that their efforts 
have been responsible for an immense increase in the 
business prosperity of their respective States. Once 
more have educators demonstrated the possibilities of 
teaching parents through the education of children. 

VII Teaching Grown-Ups to Read 

The educational work which is being done in the 
uplands of tEe South has already received widespread 
recognition. The slogan, *'Down with the moonshine 
still and up with the moonlight school," typifies the 
spirit of the upland community. 

One might journey far before discovering a more 
enthusiastic people than the teachers and the scholars 
of the Southern uplands. The appalling extent of illit- 
eracy among the descendants of Marion's men finds a 
parallel in their pathetic desire for some form of 
education. 

The Southern hill whites love the old and fear the 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 237 

new. Traditionally, they belong to a past generation; 
actually, they are reaching out for the better things 
which the new generation can offer. The moonlight 
schools are attended by old people and young alike. The 
struggling colleges, the industrial and technical schools, 
with their record of privation and hardship, bear elo- 
quent testimony to the genuine efforts which the upland 
population is making in these early years of its educa- 
tional awakening. 

Every sincere effort among the hill whites meets with 
instant response. For the most part, they deprive them- 
selves of the necessaries of life in order that they may 
send their children to school. Boys skimp and save; 
girls walk for miles along mountain trails and paths; 
communities give of the scanty means of their effort for 
the building and maintenance of schools. Everywhere 
the spirit of the new education is permeating the South- 
em upland communities. 

VIII George Washington, Junior 

One teacher, whose years of effort in the Piedmont 
have brought her the confidence and cooperation of the 
community, tells of the success of one of her earliest 
ventures with a boy of thirteen. 

The boy's father was bad; his mother slovenly and 
indifferent. The boy himself was bright and active. 

When the time came for him to enter the cotton mill, 
the teacher protested to his family, but without success. 
Still there was something that she could do for him, 
still she saw an opportunity of serving him, and she 
asked him to come to her home with a number of other 
boys, for a couple of nights a week, when they sat 
together, reading, or playing games. 

The boy had appeared sullen at first, but toward the 



238 THE NEW EDUCATION 

end of his school term he showed an active interest. It 
became apparent that he was particularly clever at 
languages. None of his lessons troubled him, and, with 
the assistance of the teacher, he learned Italian readily, 
and during the evenings, when the other boys played 
games or talked, he worked over his Italian sentences 
with vital interest. 

Just before Christmas, during the first year that this 
boy had spent in the mill, a friend visited his teacher, 
became interested in her work, and asked if there was 
any way in which she could help. 

' ' You may, ' ' said the teacher. . ' ' You may buy Andy 
an outfit." 

The friend went to the city with the order in her 
pocket, — a hat, a suit, and a complete outfit, new, as a 
Christmas present for Andy. 

On Christmas eve, Andy alone came to the teacher's 
house. She had not asked the other boys, — ^partly be- 
cause most of them preferred to stay at home, partly 
because she had no such fine present for them as she 
had for Andy. 

''Never in my life," the teacher said, ''had I seen 
Andy clean. I made up my mind that for once he should 
have a clean body as well as clean clothes. ' ' 

When Andy came that Christmas eve, the teacher 
took him into a room where there were towels, soap, a 
basin, and a new outfit of clothes. 

"Andy," she said, "this is your Christmas present 
from my friend, and now you are going to give me a 
Christmas present, too. You are going to wash up and 
dress up." 

Andy followed directions, and when he emerged from 
the room in his spick and span outfit, his hat set side- 
wise on his wet, newly combed hair, he stood up very 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 239 

straight, surveying himself as best he could from head 
to foot, and exclaimed, — ' ' Gee ! I feel just like George 
Washington. ' ' The bath and the new suit were a reali- 
zation of his highest ideal. 

^'Andy and I were always friends after that," said 
the teacher, ''and since Andy was the moving spirit 
among the boys in the village, the boys and I got along 
well together. It was my introduction to the heart of 
the community, and it came with Andy's realization of 
an ideal which he had long cherished." 

IX A Step Toward Good Health 

Having won Andy over, the teacher prepared to work 
her way past some of the barriers of prejudice which 
the community had placed between itself and civiliza- 
tion. The girls offered the readiest opening. 

' ' The homes were wretched, ' ' the teacher said. ' ' The 
people did not know the simplest health rules. They 
were strangers to sanitation or cleanliness. Their house- 
keeping was primitive and their cooking miserable. I 
had won the boys by getting them together in something 
that resembled a club. I decided that my best path to 
the girls, and from them to the community, lay through 
housekeeping. ' ' 

The hypothesis was, at least, worthy of a try-out. The 
teacher began by keeping her own house in the most 
approved manner, and asking the girls to come in and 
help her do it. 

"You'll like to take supper with me this evening," 
she would say to a group of girls at recess time. ' ' Speak 
to your mothers when you go home, and you, Sadie and 
Annie, will stay over night and sleep in the spare bed. ' ' 

They were slow to respond at first. Long habit made 
them suspicious, but when the first few girls had spent 



240 THE NEW EDUCATION 

their night with the teacher and had come home with the 
tales of her wonderful household arrangements, the 
others were looking eagerly for a chance to duplicate 
their experiences. 

"Am I next?" a little girl asked anxiously one day, 
after the invitations to a party had been given out. The 
assurance that she was, made her face shine for the 
remainder of the afternoon. ' 

"The school girls all came willingly," the teacher 
said. "It was after I had them so interested that one 
of the factory hands came in. It was Saturday night, 
and she rapped on the door before coming in with a 
hesitating touch, as if she was afraid. She sat down 
across from me, smoothing her dress and looking un- 
happy. ' ' 

"You'll not understand," said the factory girl, 
apologetically. "But Mame is in your school — she's 
my sister. You had her up last week to spend the night. 
You '11 remember ? ' ' 

The teacher nodded. 

"She came home, and ever since she's been telling us 
about the way you did things. And I've been think- 
ing, *' 

She stopped and looked at the teacher, half suspi- 
ciously, half appealingly. 

"I've been thinking how nice it would be for me, if 
I could do them things the same as you. You see," she 
spoke rapidly, " I 'm gettin ' married soon now, and when 
Mame came a-telling that way, and our house like it 
always is, and the baby crying, and nothing done ex- 
ceptin' ma a-scoldin', and I says to myself, I says, if I 
could do things like that teacher can do 'em mebbe I 
wouldn't make mistakes like ma makes 'em." She 
paused for breath, looking expectant. 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 241 

''You would like to come here to see how I do 
things?" the teacher asked. 

The girl nodded eagerly. 

' ' Come Monday after hours, and spend the night with 
me." 

"After that," the teacher said, "it was a great deal 
easier. The next thing I wanted to do was to get the 
children examined for glasses and throat trouble. There 
were two second-rate country doctors there who knew 
little or nothing about modern medicine. The nearest 
man that I could trust was forty miles away. He was 
a specialist, too, and high priced. Still, I sat down 
and wrote him a letter, telling him how we were fixed. 
He answered by return mail, making a special rate and 
setting a day. I hoped to take twelve of the children, 
but I had car fare for only seven. Then came our wind- 
fall. I told the railroad what I was trying to do, and 
they made a special excursion rate and took the children 
at less than half fare. We were all able to go, and the 
extra money went for a treat to soda and the movies." 

The .children went back home, singing the praises of 
the trip, the teacher, and the doctor. They went back, 
too, with expert advice and assistance, and with the 
good news that others would soon have a turn. 

Group by group, the needy children were brought 
do-^Ti to the specialist in the city. Some were even 
operated on, although at the outset the parents would 
not hear of operations. In the end the children won, 
however. Their enthusiasm for the teacher and their 
doctor carried the day. 

' ' It has been slow, ' ' the teacher said, ' ' but at the end 
of it all, they see better, hear better, eat more whole- 
some, nourishing food, live better, and understand them- 
selves better. On the whole it has paid. ' ' 



242 THE NEW EDUCATION 

X Theory and Practice! 

The rural schools of the South have no monopoly on 
progressive educational views. A number of Southern 
cities have taken up their position in the vanguard of 
educational progress. Notable among these cities is 
Columbus, Georgia, — a city of 20,554 people, in which 
Superintendent Eoland B. Daniel has undertaken a 
vigorous policy of shaping the schools in the interests 
of the community. There were in 1913, 5,356 children of 
school age in Columbus. Of this number, 4,089 were in 
the schools. The school population is rather unevenly 
divided, racially, — 3,348 of the children of school age 
are white, and 1,198 are colored. About one-quarter of 
the white population depends for its livelihood upon 
the mills. Columbus is surrounded by an agricultural 
district from which come many children in search of 
high school training. The city of Columbus presents 
an industrial problem of an unusually complex charac- 
ter, and the manner in which this problem has been 
handled by the schools is worthy of the highest com- 
mendation. Superintendent Daniel has laid down three 
definite planks in his educational platform for the city of 
Columbus. In the first place, he aims to provide school 
accommodations which are fitted to the peculiar needs 
of each part of the community. In the second place, he 
aims to shape the school system of Columbus in terms of 
the local environment of the children. In the third 
place, he has inaugurated a high school policy, which 

1 For a full statement of tlie work of the Columbus Schools 
see '^Industrial Education in Columbus, Ga., E. B. Daniel, U. S. 
Bureau of Education, Bulletin 535, Government Printing Office, 1913. 
Also, The Annual Eeport of the Columbus Public Schools for 
the Year Ending August 1, 1913, 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 243 

makes high school training practical as well as theo- 
retical. 

Among the mill operatives of Columbus, Superin- 
tendent Daniel estimates that there are approximately 
800 children of school age. The situation presented by 
these children was critical in the extreme. There was 
an absence of compulsory education laws; few of the 
children attended any school, and when they did enter a 
school they seldom remained long enough to secure any 
marked educational advantage. Less than 5 per cent. 
of the children continued in school after they were old 
enough to work in the cotton mills. 

Pursuant of his intention to make the schools supply 
the needs of all of the children of Columbus, Superin- 
tendent Daniel organized the North Highlands School 
in the factory district. Of this school he says: ''It is 
not made to conform, either in course of study or hours, 
to the other schools of similar rank in the system, for 
the board desires to meet the conditions and convenience 
of the people for whom the school was established. 
Classroom work begins in the morning at 8 o'clock 
and continues until 11 o'clock, with a recess of 10 
minutes at 9 :30. The afternoon session begins at 1 
o'clock, and the school closes for the day at 3:30 
o'clock." 

The long intermission in the middle of the day is 
given in order to allow the children to take hot lunches 
to parents, brothers, and sisters who are working in the 
mill. Many of the mills are located at some distance 
from the school. Some of the children are called upon 
to walk as much as two miles during the noon hour, in 
order to carry the lunches. These ' ' dinner toters, ' ' when 
carrying lunch baskets for persons outside of the family, 
receive 25 cents per week per basket. In case several 



244 THE NEW EDUCATION 

baskets are carried, the income thus earned is consider- 
able. 

The school thus organized on the basis of local needs 
is further specialized in a way that will appeal to the 
needs of the mill operative group. The academic courses 
are similar to the courses offered in the other schools, 
except that more emphasis is laid upon the ''three R's.'^ 
Superintendent Daniel says that the time is very limited 
in which these children will attend school, and more 
attention is given as to what may be regarded as funda- 
mental. ''While the prescribed course contemplates 
seven years, few continue after the fifth or sixth year, 
so strong is the call of the mills. Not more than 1 per 
cent finish this school and pursue their studies further. ' ' 

The three morning hours and the first hour in the 
afternoon are devoted to academic studies, while the 
last hour and a half of the day is given to practical 
work. The boys are required to take elementary courses 
in woodwork and gardening, alternating these two 
branches on alternate days. The girls are given work 
in basketry, sewing, cooking, poultry raising, and 
gardening. 

The results of the introduction of this applied work 
are summed up by Superintendent Daniel in this way, — 
"In all of these lines of work it is now the hope of the 
school only to better living conditions a little among the 
people for whom it was especially organized. The trans- 
formation is necessarily slow. In the beginning, no 
doubt, the advocates of this type of school thought that 
many might be induced to continue in school and do 
more advanced work, especially along vocational lines. 
In this respect the school has been a disappointment to 
some. "We are" seldom able to induce pupils to finish 
even the limited course offered in this school. ' ' 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 245 

The North Highland School, in addition to its work 
for the children, has begun an organized effort to raise 
the standards of the local community. Every day the 
principal and teachers of the school visit some of the 
homes, giving helpful suggestions, caring for the sick, 
and in any other possible way contributing to home life. 
Superinendent Daniel reports the progress in this re- 
spect by saying, — ' ' Confidence is now so strong that one 
of the teachers every Saturday morning collects the 
physically defective ones in the community and takes 
them to the free clinic for operations or treatment. At 
first parents would see their children die rather than 
permit them to be operated upon, but now they seldom 
decline to permit them to be taken by a teacher to the 
free clinic, when in the judgment of the teacher it is 
necessary. ' ' 

The school has made an effort to organize the older 
people of the community. There are entertainments and 
school gatherings in which parents and children alike 
participate. As a further help to those parents who 
are compelled to work in the mills, the school grounds, 
which are amply provided with a full play equipment, 
are open to all of the children at all hours of the day 
and all days of the week. "It is not infrequent," says 
Superintendent Daniel, "that, when the mother goes to 
work at 6 in the morning, she sends her children to the 
school to enjoy the privileges of the grounds until the 
opening of the school at 8 o'clock." 

The work of the negro schools is similarly fitted to the 
industrial needs of the negro children. Boys and girls 
alike devote a considerable portion of their time to 
industrial work. The main purpose of this work for 
negroes is to prepare them for the line of industrial 
opportunity open to them. The school reports that it 



246 THE NEW EDUCATION 

has developed a number of good blacksmiths, carpenters, 
cooks, seamstresses, and laundresses. Pupils who remain 
in the schools long enough to complete the course are 
able to earn, upon leaving school, about twice what they 
would be able to earn had no such training been 
provided. 

A vigorous attempt has been made to reorganize grade 
work in the interests of clearness and effectiveness. As 
Superintendent Daniel puts the matter, — "We under- 
took to place before the teachers a definite problem, and 
to put suggestions into tangible form. We stated that 
all subjects could be taught with the books merely as 
helps and means to an end, and contend further for 
the doctrine that a working knowledge of books and 
subjects is far more desirable than accomplishing the 
feat of memorizing the printed page." Many teachers 
will be astonished by the doctrine which Superintendent 
Daniel evolves from this statement of educational theory. 
' ' The teachers were asked to conduct the work in such a 
manner that it would not be necessary to recite or take 
written tests with closed books, but that school books 
be used as tools with which to work, and that the child 
should use text-books as adults do books of reference, 
while the teacher guides and directs in the development 
of thought. 

This attempt of Superintendent Daniel to proceed 
with the grammar school work in a more natural way, 
and to relate all of it more closely to life, met with some 
interesting results, as may be gathered from the follow- 
ing test questions which were worked out by teachers in 
pursuance of the instructions to make text-books inci- 
dental and thought primary in the school work. 



SOUTH FOR THE NEW EDUCATION 247 



AEITHMETIC, THIRD B 

Roy shops for his mother at Kirven's. He buys 2 boxes of 
hair pins at $.05 each, 6 towels at $.10 each, and 5 handkerchiefs 
for $.25. What was his bill? If he hands the clerk $1.00, how 
much change will he receive? 

THIRD A 

If Isabel's 2 pair of shoes cost $4, how much will shoes for 
all the girls in the class cost? 

GEOGRAPHY THIRD B 

Turn to the map on page 65 and find and write the names of 
seven different shore forms. 



ARITHMETIC, FOURTH B 

In our room are 46 pupils. The class receives 230 tablets 
and 138 pencils for the term. How many of each does each 
child receive? 

GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH B 

What products may be sent to us from New England? If 
they w^ere shipped from Portsmouth, N. H., on what bodies of 
water would they travel? 

GEOGRAPHY, FOURTH A 

Why does the United States carry on more trade with the 
British Isles than with Germany? At what seaport would our 
vessels land in the British Isles? What would they carry and 
what would they bring back? 

GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH A 

What highways of trade will be used for shipping oranges 
from San Francisco to Columbus, -Ga., by way of the Panama 
Canal? How many miles is this, approximately? (Use rule and 
map on page 65.) 



248 THE NEW EDUCATION 

GEOGRAPHY, FIFTH B 

What is the chief industry of the people of Columbus, and 
why? Describe the climate of our city, tell what fruits, vegeta- 
bles and farm products find a market here. What would a boat 
coming up the river bring to Columbus? What would it carry 
back? 

Superintendent Daniel's viewpoint is clear and sane. 
"It is not sufficient," he says, 'Ho maintain courses in 
domestic science and manual training for the grades, 
and to teach other subjects as if they belonged to another 
realm." Consequently he has made every endeavor to 
bring together the forces of the community and of the 
school in a sympathetic whole, around which the educa- 
tional life of the town must center. 

The industrial high school is an integral and highly 
important part of the work in the Columbus schools. 
Side by side with the academic high school, it affords 
an opportunity for the children who do not intend to 
continue their educational work beyond high school 
grade to get some assistance in the direction of a train- 
ing for life activity. It was originally intended to 
duplicate, in a measure, the conditions and hours main- 
tained in the industrial plants of the city. Formerly 
the school was open for eleven calendar months ; at the 
present time a vacation of six weeks is allowed. The 
school hours are from 8 o'clock in the morning until 
4 o'clock in the afternoon, for five days each week. 
Pupils who have not maintained the required standard 
during the week are compelled to attend school on 
Saturday. 

All pupils of the Industrial High School are required 
to take academic work of high school grade in mathe- 
matics, history, English, and science. 



SOUTH FOE THE NEW EDUCATION 249 

The introduction of manual training and domestic 
science into the grades of all Columbus schools has 
pointed many children in the direction of the Industrial 
High School. While it is not the intention of the school 
authorities to make the work of the Industrial High 
School final, it is hoped that those children who are 
enabled to continue with educational work are benefited 
markedly by this specialized course. 

Throughout this deliberate attempt of the Columbus 
school administration to make the schools fit the needs 
of the community there is evidence of a scientific spirit 
which is in the last degree commendable. The commu- 
nity need is first ascertained. The school work iis then 
organized in response to this community need. If, per- 
chance, the first effort meets with little success, addi- 
tional effort is continued until some measure of success 
is assured. The school authorities are not afraid to 
change their opinions or their system. They are not 
even afraid to fail on a given experiment. The one 
thing of which they are afraid is failure to provide for 
the educational needs of the community. 

XI A People Coming to Its Own 

The first great battle in the educational awakening of 
the South has been won. The people realize the neces- 
sity for an intelligently active population. 

The second battle is well under way. The people of 
the South are shaping the schools to meet the peculiar 
educational needs which the economic and social prob- 
lems of the South present. 

A rallying-cry is ringing through the Southern 
States, — ''The schools for the people; the people for 
the schools ; and a higher standard of education and of 
life for the community." 



250 THE NEW EDUCATION 

The South is in line for the New Education. School 
officials are working. Superintendent Daniel writes, — 
' ' Everyone connected with the system has been too intent 
on doing his work well and in establishing and main- 
taining the ideals of the system .to be disturbed by petty 
difficulties. The teachers," he adds, ''have appeared to 
feel that it was rather a privilege than a burden to 
participate in making the Columbus system efficient 
through the preparation of her children for life. ' ' ^ The 
public is asking for a correlation of school with life, and 
the schools are educating the South through the children. 

1 Annual report of the Columbus Public Schools, 1913, p. 18. 



CHAPTER Xin 
THE SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 

I The Standard of Education 

The educational experiments described in the preced- 
ing chapters are replete with the spirit of the New Edu- 
cation. From the virile educational systems of the 
country a protest is being sounded against traditional 
formalism. School men have learned that that which is 
is not necessarily right. Each concept, each method, 
must run the gauntlet of critical analysis. It is not 
sufficient to allege in support of an educational principle 
that the results derived from its application have been 
satisfactory in the past. Insistently the question is 
repeated, "What are its effects upon the problems of 
to-day?" 

Educational ancestor worship is no more acceptable 
to the progressive spirit of the Western World than is 
ancestor worship in any other form. The past has made 
its contribution, and has died in making it. For the 
contribution the present is grateful, but it must stead- 
fastly refuse in its own name, and in the name of the 
future, to be bound by any decree of the past which will 
not stand the acid test of present experience. 

The old education was beset by traditionalism. Under 
its dominance, education, defined once and for all, was 
established as a standard to which men must attain; 
hence a preceptor, guiding his young charges along the 
straight path to knowledge, might, with perfect confi- 
dence, admonish them, "Lo here, the three R's is educa- 

251 



252 THE NEW EDUCATION 

tion," or ''Lo there, Greek and higher mathematics is 
education, ' ' according as his training had been in the 
three R's or in Greek. In either case he felt certain of 
his general ground. Once and for all the educational 
standard had been set. By that standard new ideas were 
judged, and either justified or condemned. 

Under this predetermined scheme there was a formula 
for education — a formula as definite as that for making 
bread or pickling pork. The formula was applied to 
each child who presented himself to the administration. 
If the formula worked successfully the child was de- 
clared educated in the same way that pork which has 
been successfully treated by the proper processes is de- 
clared to be pickled. If the formula did not work the 
child was not educated. He sat in school with a dunce- 
cap upon his head, or else played hookey and spent his 
hours in fishing, swimming or idling. 

Perhaps, in view of the recent contributions of science, 
it would be more illuminating to say that the old educa- 
tion inoculated the child with a predetermined educa- 
tional virus. If the virus ''took" the child was declared 
immune to the bacteria of ignorance, illiteracy, stupid- 
ity and other prevalent social complaints. If the virus 
did not take the schoolmaster ostentatiously washed his 
hands of the recreant. 

II Standardization Was a Failure 

Only one argument need be urged against this method 
of attacking the educational problem — it did not work. 
In the first place, the most brilliant school successes 
often turned out to be the most arrant life failures, while 
the school derelicts frequently became life successes of 
stellar magnitude. To the thinking man the inference 
was plain; the formula was not an unqualified success. 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 253 

Not only was this true of the children who went through 
school, but there were crowds of children for whom the 
school held no attraction whatever. They attended a 
few sessions, wasted a scant bit of energy in educational 
effort, and then dropped out, hopeless of obtaining re- 
sults by further " study. '^ 

The old education read out of the school those children 
who could not benefit by its teachings. How utterly dif- 
ferent the concept which has gripped the minds of pro- 
gressive, modern educators ! Under their guidance edu- 
cation has become what Herbert Spencer called it — a 
preparation for complete living. No longer a fixed, 
objective standard, education has been recognized as an 
enlargement of the life horizon of each individual boy 
or girl in the community. ' ' Teach us individual needs, ' ' 
proclaim the educational progressives, ' ' and we will tell 
you what the character of education must be." 

Thus has education ceased to be an objective standard, 
created by one age and handed down rigidly immobile 
to the ages succeeding. Instead it is accepted as a ful- 
filment — a complement — to child needs. Always educa- 
tion has been regarded as a process of molding life and 
character. The chief difference between the old and the 
new education is that the old education made a mold, 
and then forced the child to fit the mold, while the new 
education begins by determining the character of child 
needs, and then fits the mold to the needs. The old 
education was like the farmer who built a corn-sheller, 
and then attempted to find ears of corn which would fit 
into the sheller; the new education is like the farmer 
who first measured the corn and then built his sheller to 
fit the corn. The old education selected the class which 
was able to conform to its requirements ; the new educa- 
tion serves all classes. 



254 THE NEW EDUCATION 

III Education as Growth 

Under the impetus given to "it by modern thinkers, 
education has become the direction of growth, rather 
than the application of a formula. The child is a devel- 
oping creature. It has become the function of educa- 
tion to watch over and guide the development. 

Nor do the modern schools consider mental develop- 
ment as the sole object of educational endeavor. Phys- 
ical growth is an equally essential part of child life. 
Therefore the direction of physical growth becomes just 
as vital a part of the educational machinery. Aesthetic 
and spiritual growth require like emphasis. Each phase 
of child life receives independent consideration. 

The old education through mental impression is giv- 
ing way before the new education through physical, 
mental and spiritual expression. Expression is the 
essence of growth ; and since the school is to foster child 
growth it must place child expression in a place of 
paramount importance. 

Child needs, rather than abstract standards, have thus 
become the basis of school activity. The old education 
developed its course of study by surveying the interests 
of adults, and picking from among them those, appar- 
ently the most simple, which were fit for children. The 
new education applies the laboratory method — studying 
children and their interests — reports, among its other 
findings, the quite evident fact that children enter into 
life as whole-heartedly as adults ; that the field of their 
interest lies, not in the left-over problems of older people, 
but in their own problems and processes ; and that there- 
fore the educator must found his philosophy and his 
practice on an understanding of the child and child 
needs. 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 255 

There is in the world a phenomenon called adult life, 
with its phases, problems and ideals. There is likewise 
in the world a phenomenon called child life, with its 
phases, problems and ideals. A complete understanding 
of either may not be derived through a study of the 
other. Child needs exist separate from and different 
from adult needs. It is the business of the new educa- 
tion to understand them and meet them. 

Two appeals are reaching the ears of the modern 
educator: the first, the appeal of the child; the second, 
the appeal of the community. The appeal of the child 
is an appeal for the opportunity of developing all of its 
faculties. Physically, children grow. The school, 
recognizing this fact, is making a vigorous effort to 
break the shell of custom, which has confined its activ- 
ities to purely intellectual pursuits, and provide a 
physical training which will lead the school child to per- 
fect normal body growth, as Avell as normal growth of 
mind. Even in its intellectual activity the school is 
recognizing the importance of making the child mind an 
active machine for thought, rather than a passive store- 
house for information. Though less emphasized, the 
training for sensual growth is becoming of ever increas- 
ing importance in the new education. Above all, the 
aesthetic side of child life is being expanded in an effort 
to round out a completed adulthood. 

IV Child Needs and Community Needs 

The recognition of child needs, which forms so in- 
tegral a part of the new education, is paralleled by a 
similar recognition of the needs of the community. The 
progressive educator is laying aside for a moment the 
details of his task, and asking himself the pertinent 
question : ' ' What should the community expect in re- 



256 THE NEW EDUCATION 

turn for the annual expenditure of a billion dollars on 
public education?" What are community needs if not 
the needs for manhood and womanhood ? They are well 
summed up in three words — virility, efficiency, citizen- 
ship. Possessed of those attributes a group of indi- 
viduals rounds itself inevitably into a vigorous, pro- 
gressive community. They are normal qualities which 
a people must demand if their social standards are to 
be maintained. Since they constitute so vital an element 
in social life, a community lavish in its expenditures for 
schools may surely expect the school product to be 
virile, efficient, worthy citizens. The new education, 
recognizing the justice of this demand, is crying out 
insistently for social, as well as individual, training in 
the school. 

The new educational institutions have set themselves 
to meet the needs of the child and of the community. 
Their success depends upon their ability to understand 
these needs and to supply them. 

The old-fashioned schoolmaster asked: "How can I 
compel ? ' ' His answer was the rod. The modem school- 
master asks : ' ' How can I direct ? ' ' His answer is a 
laboratory, open-minded, scientific method, and a host 
of varied courses designed to meet the needs of indi- 
vidual children and of individual communities. 

Communities vary as greatly in their characteristics 
as do children. It is now certain that no formula will 
provide education for all children. Each new study of 
community needs makes it more evident that no system 
will supply education for all communities. It is the 
business of the educator to study the individual child 
and the individual community, and then to provide an 
education that will assist both to grow normally and 
soundly in all of their parts. 



SPIRIT OF THE NEW EDUCATION 257 

V The Final Test of Education 

The school is a servant, not a master. In that fact 
lies its greatness — the greatness of its opportunity and 
of its responsibility. As an institution its object is 
service — assistance in growth. Development is the goal 
of education. Virility, efficiency, citizenship, manhood, 
womanhood — these are its legitimate products. Its tools 
and formulas are such as will most effectively serve these 
ends. When the increase of knowledge leads to new 
methods and formulas which will prove more effective 
than the old ones, then the old ones must be laid aside, 
reverently, perhaps, but none the less firmly, and the 
new ones adopted. Changes may not be made hastily 
and without due consideration; but when experiment 
has shown that the new device is more advantageous in 
furthering the objects of education than the old and 
tried formulas, a change is inevitable. 

The first and last word on the subject is spoken when 
this question is asked and answered: "Does education 
exist for children, or do children exist for education?" 

If children exist for education, then it is just that 
an objective educational standard should be created; it 
is fair that a hard and fast course of study be mapped 
out in conformity with that standard; it is right that 
educational machinery be constructed which automati- 
cally turns away from the schools any child who does not 
conform to the school system as it is. If children exist 
for education, they should either conform to its require- 
ments, or else, if they will not or cannot conform, they 
should be mercilessly thrust aside. 

If, on the other hand, education exists for children, 
then the primal consideration must be child needs. If 
any one child, or any group of children, has needs which 



258 ' THE NEW EDUCATION 

are not met by existing educational institutions, then 
these institutions must be remodeled. If an adequate 
congenial education is a part of the birthright of every 
American child, then educational institutions must be 
reorganized and reshaped until they provide that birth- 
right in the fullest possible measure. 

Already the answer has been formulated. Already 
educators have recognized the potency of the saying : 
''The schools were made for the children, not the chil- 
dren for the schools." Hence it follows that no school 
system is so sacred, no method of teaching so vener- 
able, no textbook so infallible, no machinery of admin- 
istration so permanent, that it must not give way before 
the educational needs of childhood. 

Concerning the educational problem of to-day, yes- 
terday cannot speak with authority. Each age has its 
problems — problems which may be solved by that age, 
or handed on unsolved to the future. The past is dead. 
Only its voice — its advice and suggestion — serves as a 
guide or as a warning. Of authority it should have not 
an atom. 

The educational opportunities of to-day are without 
peer. The educational machinery, ready at hand, is 
being transformed to meet the newly understood needs 
of the child and of the community. The spirit of the 
new education is the spirit of service, the spirit of fair 
dealing, the spirit of growth for the individual and of 
advancement for society. Here are individual needs. 
There are aligned the social obligations and requirements 
of the age. In so far as it lies within the power of the 
school, the children who leave its doors shall have their 
needs supplied, and shall be equipped to play their part 
as virile, efficient citizens in a greater community. Such 
is the spirit of the new education. 



INDEX 



Age distribution, 36, 

and school progress, 37. 
Ages of childhood, 35. 
American school system, Sta- 
tistics of, 19, 20. 
AjDplied education, need for, 

156. 
Applied "uork, Cincinnati, 136. 

in the grades, 161. 
Average children and the old 
education, 39. 
fallacy of, 34. 

Berks County schools, manual 
training in, 186. 
physical training in, 186. 

Boys and girls, object of edu- 
cating, 42. 

BroTrn, E. E., quoted, 13. 

Carney, Mabel, quoted, 179. 
Chancellor, W. E., quoted, 40, 

41. 
Change, prevalence of, 24. 

in social structure, 25. 
Child growth, stages of, 44. 
Child needs, recognition of, 56. 

and community needs, 255. 
Childhood, ages of, 35. 
Children, needs of analyzed, 45. 
social needs of, 48. 
varying capacity of, 37, 38. 
vs. subject matter, 39. 
Cincinnati, educational advan- 
tages of, 148. 
kindergarten work in, 129. 
school system of, 125. 
school policy continued, 150. 
special school work in, 141. 
schools, co-operation in, 126. 
creed of, 127. 
general support of, 126. 
new plans for, 149. 



social centers in, 151. 
social work of, 150. 
City and country, educational 

value of, 29. 
City home, effect of industrial 

changes on, 30, 31. 
City life and the new basis for 

education, 28, 29. 
Civic education, necessity for, 

49. 
Civics teaching in the grades, 

Cincinnati, 135. 
Club activity in schools, recog- 
nition of, 235. 
Coliunbus, Ga., curriculum of 
schools, 244. 
local needs basis of, 242, 243. 
school policy of, 242, 243. 
Community and the school, 72. 
education applied to a small 

town, 52. 
life, contribution of schools 

to, 167. 
needs and child life, 256. 
Consolidated school, advan- 
tages of, 179, 180. 
course of study in, 172. 
daily program in, 174. 
disadvantages of, 179. 
growth of in South, 177, 178. 
Continuation High School 
work, 109. 
schools in Ohio, 76. 
Co-operation, spirit of in con- 
solidated schools, 172. 
Country, the call of the, 170, 

171. 
Country life, transformation 

in, 171, 172. 
Country school, daily program 
in a district, 173. 
daily program in a consoli- 
dated, 174. 



259 



260 



THE NEW EDUCATION 



two possibilities of, 171. 

the duty of, 194. 

new geography, 185. 

task of, 193, 194. 

transformation in, 171, 172. 

schools and physical training, 
186. 
Courses of study, correlation 
in, 135. 

home school, 69. 
Criticism of schools, general, 
11. 

significance, 17. 
Curriculum, content of, 44. 

requirements of, 51. 

Defectives, treatment of, Cin- 
cinnati, 144. 
Discipline, disappearance of, 

Oyler School, 165. 
Distribution of age, 36. 
District school, daily program 

in, 173. 
Domestic science, course in 
Lowville High School, 122. 
course in Page County, 190. 
home school movement, 68. 
importance of, 51. 
in the grades, 159. 
in a Kentucky school, 195- 

200. 
in Sleepy Eye schools, 213- 

216. 
problems in, 160. 
Draper, A. S., quoted, 12, 13, 
18. 

Education and the industrial 
revolution, 26, 27, 30. 

and the success habit, 95. 

as growth, 254. 

city, effect of industrial 
changes on, 30, 31. 

creed of, Cincinnati schools, 
127. 

elastic system of, 127. 

essentials of, 15, 16. 

for home-making, 68. 

for life, 43. 

for the whole child, 81. 

in the early home, 27, 28. 



place of physical training in, 

71. 
public lectures and, 73. 
purpose of, 15, 16. 
new basis for, 24. 
new studies, 74. 
object of, 22, 23, 42. 
social importance of, 19, 20. 
specialization in, 75. 
standard of, 251. 
theory and practice, 242-249. 
in Kentucky, reaching par- 
ents through children, 
195-206. 
in the South, canning clubs, 
234, 235. 

corn clubs, 225-228, 229-233. 
effect of on corn yield, 

230-233. 
improving health, 241. 
improving home life, 239, 

241. 
teaching parents through 
children, 225-228, 229- 
233. 
Educational advance in Cin- 
cinnati, 148. 
Educational formulas, danger 

of, 252. 
Educational needs and the 

small town, 52. 
Educational problems of an in- 
dustrial community, 55. 
Educational work and the small 

town, 52. 
Elementary grades, activities 
of, 87. 
co-operation in, 86. 
special studies for, 89. 
spirit of service in, 90. 
English, as a stimulus for other 
studies, 63. 
constructive work in, 61, 62. 
new methods for, 61. 
organization of, Grand Eap- 

ids High School, 111. 
original work, 65. 
story work and, 64. 
use of in other studies. 111. 
Enrollment and attendance, 
statistics of, 17, 18. 



INDEX 



261 



Facts, place of in education, 
22. 

Fallacy of average children, 
34, 35. 

Fisher, Irving, quoted, 15. 

Formalism in education, dan- 
ger of, 252. 

Froebel, F., quoted, 28. 

Gary, plan of the schools in, 

81. 
Geography, new method of 

teaching, 59. 
Geography and arithmetic, 
method of teaching in a 
southern school, 246-248. 
Geography in Newark, 59. 
Grade work, regeneration of, 

Cincinnati, 132. 
Grades, amalgamation of with 
high school, 99. 
applied work in, 161. 
Grand Eapids High School, vo- 
cational guidance in, 110. 
Growth, and child activity, 47. 
and education, 254. 
through play, 46. 
of children, stages in, 44. 

Hanus, P. H., quoted, 13, 14. 
Health, importance of, 45. 
High School, amalgamation of 
with grades, 99. 
at Lowville, 116. 
course of study in Cincinnati, 

138. 
future of, 114. 
growing importance of, 54- 

56. 
popularization of Cincinnati, 

137. 
promotion to, without exam- 
inations, 94. 
responsibility of, 92. 
social status of, 92. 
High school children, experi- 
ments with, 92. 
High school courses, arrange- 
ment of, 108. 
High school status, Superin- 
tendent Spaulding on, 92. 



High" school training, right of 

children to, 105. 
High schools, co-operation with 
elementary grades, 98. 
technical development of, 
106. 
Home, education in, 27, 28. 
Home making, education for, 

68. 
Home school, activities of, 70. 
course of work in, 69. 
in Indianapolis, 68. 
in Providence, 69. 
Home visiting in the grades, 

166. 
Home work, disadvantages of, 
79. 
opportunities for in school, 
79. 
Huxley, T. H., quoted, 16. 

Industrial communities, educa- 
■ tional problems, 55. 
Industrial High School, place 

of in the school system, 

248. 
Industrial system, effect of on 

education, 27. 
Institutions, effects of change 

upon, 26. 

John Swaney School, course of 
study, 176. 
equipment of, 176. 
social life in, 176, 177. 
Junior High Schools, outlook 
for, 98. 

Kentucky education, teaching 

a community to cook, 195-200. 

Kindergartens, at Gary, Ind., 

58. 

progressive work in, 58. 

in relation to grade work, 

131. 
vitalized work in, 129. 

Linden, Ind., equipment of con- 
solidated schools, 175. 

Locust Grove School, method of 
teaching a community, 
195-206. 



262 



THE NEW EDUCATION 



Lowville High School, courses 
in, 121. 
domestic science in, 122. 
social service of, 123. 
work in, 116. 

Mass training, defects of, 101. 
Mathematics, and life prob- 
lems, 60. 
in Gary schools, 60. 
in Indianapolis schools, 60. 
Mothers ' clubs, organization 
of, 163. 
work of, Cincinnati, 132, 163. 

Needs of school children, 43. 

New basis for education, 24. 
and city life, 28, 29. 

New education in the South, 
220-250. 

Newark vacation school, 80. 

Newton Technical High School, 
success of, 96. 

North Highland School, indus- 
trial training in, 245, 246. 
raising community standards, 
245. 

Oconto County, Wis., schools, 
agricultural work in, 183- 
185. 
the new arithmetic, 184, 185. 
the new English, 184, 185. 
Ohio, continuation schools, 76. 
Old education, spirit of, 253. 
One-room school, making it 
worth while, 182-187. 
possibilities of, 182-187. 
Open air schools, 71. 

results of, 72. 
Original work in English, 65. 
Overwork, extent in schools, 14, 

15. 
Oyler School, social education 
in, 153. 

Page County, Iowa, contests in 
schools, 189. 
domestic science, 190. 
ideal schools in, 188-193. 



social life in, 191, 192. 
training for country life, 
189-190. 
Physical training and educa- 
tion, 71. 
a part of school work, 82. 
Play, and growth, 46. 
creative forms of, 48. 
stages of, 47. 
Playgrounds, Cincinnati, 145. 
Popularized High Schools, Cin- 
cinnati, 137. 
Promotion for special students, 

92. 
Promotion, improvements in, 
85. 
new methods of, 85. 
Promotion average, fetish of, 

40, 41. 
Public lectures, and education, 
73. 

Eapp, Eli, quoted, 182, 186. 
Eegeneration of grade work, 

Cincinnati, 132. 
Eural districts, needs of, 54. 

School and community, 167. 

School and shop work in high 
school, 109. 

School feeding, 72. 

School children, needs of, 43. 

School equipment, educational 
nature of, 120. 

School houses, social uses for, 
117. 

School machinery, abolition of, 
84. 
necessity for, 32. 
new standards of, 32. 

School mortality, statistics of, 
18. 

School plant, wider use of, 73. 

School progress and age distri- 
bution, 37. 

School work related to shop 
work, 76. 

Schools, agricultural training 
at Sleepy Eye, 208-211. 
agricultural training in Ocon- 
to County, Wis., 183-185. 



INDEX 



263 



agricultural training in Page 

County, 189, 190. 
and the community, 72. 
as public servants, 257. 
city, effect on children, 33, 

34. 
condition of, Montclair, N. 

J., 13, 14. 
consolidated vs. district, 171, 

172. 
courses at Sleepy Eye, Minn., 

218. 
courses fitted to community 

needs at Sleepy Eye, 207, 

208. 
domestic science at Sleepy 

Eye, Minn., 213-216. 
elementary plumbing at 

Sleepy Eye, Minn., 209. 
equipment at Sleepy Eye, 

214. 
equipment of Linden, Ind., 

175. 
general criticism of, 11. 
influence on community at 

Sleepy Eye, Minn., 217. 
local service of, 157. 
mechanical course at Sleepy 

Eye, Minn., 214. 
Montgomery County, Ind., 

180, 181. 
Page County, Iowa, 189-193. 
purpose of, 42, 43, 
short agricultural course at 

Sleepy Eye, Minn., 212, 

213. 
size of, 33. 
social uses of, Cincinnati, 

158. 
Self- government in high 

schools, 102, 104. 
Sex hygiene, importance of, 

46. 
Shop work and school work, 76. 
Sleepy Eye, Minn., course in 

domestic science, 213-216. 
course in elementary plumb- 
ing and steam-fitting, 209. 
courses given in schools, 218. 
department of agriculture, 

208-211. 



equipment for mechanical 

work, 214. 
fitting schools to community 

needs, 207, 208. 
influence on community at 

large, 217. 
mechanical course, 214. 
Sleepy Eye, Minn., short course 

in agriculture, 212, 213. 
Small town, educational work 

of, 52. 
Smith, W. H., ' ' Corn Club, ' ' 228. 
Social centers in Cincinnati 

schools, 151. 
Social change, 25. 
Social education, Cincinnati, 153. 

content of, 49. 
Social importance of education, 

19, 20. 
Social needs of children, 48. 
Southern schools, corn clubs in, 

225-228, 229-233. 
Special school for defectives, 

Cincinnati, 144. 
Special schools, Cincinnati, 141. 
Specialization in education, 75. 
Spencer, H., quoted, 16. 
Standard of education, 251. 
Story work and English, 64. 
Student organization in high 

school, 102. 
Subjects of study, summary of, 

51. 
Success habits in education, 95. 
Summer schools, Cincinnati, 

145. 

Technical High Schools, devel- 
opment of, 106. 

Three " E 's, " Progressive 
work in, 59. 

Twelve-year schools, possibili- 
ties of, 99. 

Tyler, J. M., quoted, 16. 

University of Cincinnati, social 
relations of, 140. 

Vacation schools in Newark, 
80. 



264 



THE NEW EDUCATION 



Vernon school, before and after 

consolidation, 181. 
Vocational guidance in high 

schools, 110. 
Vocational training, appeal of, 
78. 
Cincinnati, 142. 
in elementary grades, 77. 
Lowville, 117. 



Washington Irving High 

School, procedure in, 102. 
Waste in education, 12, 13. 

extent of, 18, 19. 
Wider use of the schools, Low- 

ville, 117. 
William Penn High School, 

student organization in, 

104. 



